dared go--and each time came out with a life.

Again, but for his indomitable grit, a half-drowned father and daughter,
clinging to a capsized fishing-smack in a winter sea, would not be
alive--there are even fisherfolk who cannot swim. Monsieur le Cure saw
this at a glance, alone he fought his way in the freezing surf out to
the girl and the man. He brought them in and they lived.

* * * * *

But there is a short cut to the marsh if you do but know it--one that
has served me before. You can easily find it, for you have but to follow
your nose along the wall of Madame Vinet's cafe, creep past the modest
rose-garden of the mayor, zigzag for a hundred paces or more among
crumbling walls, and before you know it you are out on the marsh.

* * * * *

The one with the blue eye was right.

The wind _was_ from the northeast in earnest, and the tide racing in.
Half a mile outward a dozen long puntlike scows, loaded to their brims
with sand, were being borne on the swirling current up the river's
channel, each guided at the stern by a ragged dot of a figure straining
at an oar.

As I struck out across the desolate waste of mud, bound for the point of
dry marsh, the figure steering the last scow, as he passed, waved a
warning to me. With the incoming sweep of tide the sunlight faded, the
bay became noisy with the cries of sea-fowl, and the lighthouse beyond
the river's channel stood out against the ominous green sky like a stick
of school-chalk.

I jerked my cap tighter over my ears, and lowering my head to the wind
kept on. I had barely time to make the marsh. Over the black desolate
waste of clay-mud the sea was spreading its hands--long, dangerous
hands, with fingers that every moment shot out longer and nearer my
tracks. The wind blew in howling gusts now, straight in from the open
sea. Days like these the ducks have no alternative but the bay. Only a
black diver can stand the strain outside. Tough old pirates
these--diving to keep warm.

I kept on, foolish as it was. A flight of becassines were whirled past
me, twittering in a panic as they fought their way out of sudden
squalls. I turned to look back. Already my sunken tracks were
obliterated under a glaze of water, but I felt I was safe, for I had
gained harder ground. It was a relief to slide to the bottom of one of
the labyrinth of causeways that drain the marsh, and plunge on sheltered
from the win