Above them suddenly rose steep cliffs covered with coarse grass, and, if not daisies, at least their French cousins. No houses here, though piles of rubble and a bit of crumbled wall told that the abbey buildings must once have straggled down the face of this cliff. Far above small peasant children climbed and called, or swung bare legs from an outcrop of rock, and still higher a small hunched figure sat all alone on a rock. Cynthia was about to say, “Oh, there’s the little American,” but remembering what Nancy had just called her, held her tongue and busied herself with collecting a bouquet for Mrs. Brewster’s room. Presently wearying of this she sat on a stone to survey the steep climb she had already come and the sands beyond that. It seemed to her that the color of the sand had changed, darkened, in the past ten minutes. Idly she noted that the children had gone; already she could see them scampering past the rock at the base, saw them disappear. She looked back of her. Nothing here, no connection with the town. To get home one must go the way they had come. Just beyond where Nancy was still picking flowers was the American girl. Cynthia’s gaze took her in with the rest of the scene. Suddenly she was startled almost out of her wits by a small figure that tore past her, yelling at the top of his lungs. She sprang to her feet, and was still more startled to see Nancy come pelting after the boy. “_La marée ... la marée montante ..._” “What is it?” asked Cynthia, gazing after the small figure that had passed. A good model that boy would be, with his wind blown curls, his startled eyes. Nancy grabbed her arm, shouted in her ear, “Run ... _run_ ...” “What ... why?” Cynthia’s feet pounded after Nancy. Over her shoulder Nancy flung, “‘The tide,’ he said. ‘The tide is rising.’” Cynthia looked back. The girl behind them had risen from her rock. With a wrench Cynthia freed her arm from Nancy’s grasp, put hands to mouth and megaphoned. “Hurry! _Hurry!_ The _tide!_” She seemed to get the idea for immediately she came leaping down over the rocks. Cynthia paused only once to glance behind and see what good speed the girl was making, then raced to catch up with Nancy. Almost together the three reached the sands. So that was why they had changed so rapidly from ochre to lavender. Water, tidal water, seeping swiftly, menacingly from beneath, pouring in from every side. But the sand at the base of the rocks was still dry, it was hardly five minutes race around the rocks to the end of the little street. Hearts pounding, breath sobbing, they reached it together. Cynthia could not stop there. She wanted to reach her hotel, her room, feel safe ground, familiar ground that could not dissolve into seas beneath her feet, before she stopped. As she tore through the hallway, passed the astonished eyes of Madame at the desk, Nancy was close behind. Together they dragged the little American in with them, slumped together on the two beds.