d--he had been dragging it by
the stern--and, at the water's edge now, the dying efforts of a spent
and broken wave wrapped and curled around the bow in creamy foam.
Then, racing up the beach once more to the shelter of the bluff, he
knelt there to plant his lantern in the sand, ballasting it securely
with rocks, flung his jacket down beside it, and ran back to the
water's edge again.

He shoved the boat further out until it was half afloat, shipped the
oars--and waited, steadying the craft with an iron grip on the
gunwales. A wave lifted her, the water swirled around his knees,
seethed behind him, rushed back hissing sharply in its retreat--and
Jean, bending, shoved with all his strength, as he sprang aboard.

The boat shot out on the receding wave, and, as he flung himself upon
the seat, smashed into the next oncoming breaker, wavered, half turned,
righted under a mighty tug at the oars, engulfed herself in a sheet of
spray--and slid onward down into the bubbling hollow.

None in Bernay-sur-Mer was a better boatman than Jean Laparde, and
Bernay-sur-Mer in that respect held its head above all Languedoc; for
at the water fetes now for three years had not Jean Laparde secured to
it the coveted _prix_! But to-night it was a different race that lay
before him.

For a little way, while the lee of the headland held, a child almost,
once the boat was free of the broken surf on the beach, might have held
the craft to her course--but only for that little way. For fifty yards
perhaps the boat leapt forward, straight as an arrow, heading well
above the Perigeau Reef--and then suddenly the lighted lantern on the
beach seemed to travel seaward at an incredible speed, as the onrush of
tide, wind and sea through the narrows caught the boat, twisted it like
a cork, and, high-borne on a wave-crest, hurled it along past the
shoreline toward the lower end of the bay--and the twinkling lantern
was blotted out from sight. Tight-lipped, his muscles cracking with
the strain, Jean forced the boat around again, and the tough oars bent
under his strokes.

There were two ways to the Perigeau Reef--he had thought of both of
them. One, to go down in the shelter of the headland to the lower end
of the bay, circuit the shore-line there until he was free of the
mill-race through the narrows, then pull straight out for the
Perigeau--only, the _bon Dieu_ knew well, no man was strong enough for
that; it was too far, for the bay on this side,