I grabbed blindly, feeling
sure I should miss,--for it was a thousand chances to one,--but I was
stopped up violently. I tightened my clutch in desperation. I pulled
myself up, and clasped both hands round the ledge of the rock, clinging
to it precariously, my nails torn almost from my fingers. My hands
were touching Joe's. My face came up close to his. Almost he lost his
hold at the suddenness of my uncanny appearing.

He shouted to me in defiance, and it surprised me how easily I could
hear him, despite the hiss and roar of the waters. I could hear him
more easily than I had heard Rita on the beach at Neil Andrews', so
long, long ago.

"My God! Bremner,--where did you come from? What d'ye want?" he
shouted.

"I want you, Joe," I cried, right into his ear. "Rita sent me for
you,--will you come?"

"It ain't no good," he replied despairingly;--"nobody gets off'n this
hell alive."

"But we shall," I yelled. "Rita wants you. She loves you, Joe. Isn't
that worth a try, anyway?"

"You bet!" he cried, as the water dashed over his face, "but how?"

I screamed into his ear again.

"Let go when I shout. Drop on your back. After that, don't move for
your life. Leave the rest to me. Don't mind if you go under. It's
our only chance."

He nodded his head.

I waited for an abatement of the surge.

"Now!" I yelled, as a great, unbroken swell came along.

Away we whirled on top of it; past the side of The Ghoul like bobbing
corks,--into the rip and race of the tide,--sometimes above the water,
most of the time under it,--gasping,--choking,--fighting,--then
away,--in great heaving throws, from that churning death.

How brave Joe was! and how trusting! Not a struggle did he make in
that awful ordeal. He lay pliable and lightly upon me, as I floated up
the Bay,--or wherever the current might be taking us. But there was
only one direction with that flowing tide, after we had passed The
Ghoul, and I knew it was into the Bay. So quiet did Joe lie, that I
began to think the life had gone out of him. But I could do nothing
for him; nothing but try, whenever possible, to keep his head and my
own out of the sea.

How long I struggled, I cannot tell. My arms and legs moved
mechanically. I took the battering and the submerging as a matter of
course. A pleasing lethargy settled over my brain and the terror of it
all went from me.

When twenty minutes, or twenty years, might have flown, my head crashed