ight
water between us and the island. Great slow swells lifted us. We
dipped with a soothing, cradle-like motion. I forgot to be afraid,
in the delight of the warm wind that fanned our cheeks, of the
moonbeams that on the crest of every ripple were splintered
to a thousand dancing lights. I forgot fear, forgot Miss
Higglesby-Browne, forgot the harshness of the Scotch character.

"Oh, glorious, glorious!" I cried to Cuthbert Vane.

"Not so dusty, eh?" he came back in their ridiculous English slang.
Now an American would have said _some little old moon that_! We
certainly have our points of superiority.

All around the island white charging lines of breakers foamed on
ragged half-seen reefs. You saw the flash of foam leaping half the
height of the black cliffs. The thunder of the surf was in our
ears, now rising to wild clamor, fierce, hungry, menacing, now
dying to a vast broken mutter. Now our boat felt the lift of the
great shoreward rollers, and sprang forward like a living thing.
The other boat, empty of all but the rowers and returning from the
island to the ship, passed us with a hail. We steered warily away
from a wild welter of foam at the end of a long point, and shot
beyond it on the heave of a great swell into quiet water. We were
in the little bay under the shadow of the frowning cliff's.

At the head of the bay, a quarter of a mile away, lay a broad white
beach shining under the moon. At the edge of dark woods beyond a
fire burned redly. It threw into relief the black moving shapes of
men upon the sand. The waters of the cove broke upon the beach in
a white lacework of foam.

Straight for the sand the sailors drove the boat. She struck it
with a jar, grinding forward heavily. The men sprang overboard,
wading half-way to the waist. And the arms of the Honorable
Cuthbert Vane had snatched me up and were bearing me safe and dry
to shore.

The sailors hauled on the boat, dragging it up the beach, and I saw
the Scotchman lending them a hand. The hard dry sand was crunching
under the heels of Mr. Vane. I wriggled a little and Apollo, who
had grown absent-minded apparently, set me down.

Mr. Shaw approached and the two men greeted each other in their
offhand British way. As we couldn't well, under the circumstances,
maintain a fiction of mutual invisibility, Mr. Shaw, with a certain
obvious hesitation, turned to me.

"Only lady passenger, eh? Hope you're not wet through. Cookie's
ma