She let go the cable from her torn and bleeding palms, turned around, leaning against the base of the rock, and searched the maddened sea--white as a _tourmente_ of snow. No! there was no sign of a ship on the tossing froth, save two black spots appearing and disappearing convulsively in the spouting water--the life-boats she knew--but whether they were coming shoreward or going out toward some invisible point she could not tell. Determined to see better, she climbed half a dozen of the wet steps again and gazed fixedly seaward. At last something flecked with white and red, she thought, caught her eye; it was rolling in and out among the breakers, and behind it there were other objects lugubriously bobbing up and down. She jumped, and ran plungingly toward the thing nearest to the beach, finally wading thigh-deep in the broken back-wash of the flooding tide; snatched desperately at the queer bundle, and dragged it ashore, pulling it up after her with all her strength. Gasping for breath, she stopped at the shingle-top, and before investigating what she held she set her teeth. A white serge skirt, two narrow stockinged feet, a torrent of drenched hair! She turned it over, trembling violently, and, falling on her knees, saw the beautiful features--unspoiled, unscarred even, and strangely sculptural--of Laurence Palitzin. On her breast, embroidered across the white jersey, the words _Wild Rose_--the name of her yacht--made Marguerite cry out with a new horror. For a moment she crouched there, seeking mechanically for the heart, the wrist, of this first victim recovered; but she could find no sign of life; and, tears running down her face mingling with the rain and brine, she asked herself how she could at least save the body before the galloping flood claimed it again. Of herself she had no time to think, and at that minute, clambering out of the fissure, Garrassime stumbled toward her with reckless haste. Before she had either heard or seen him he was at her side, had caught up the body of his lost mistress--which a life-belt still encircled in futile mockery--and, drawing Marguerite by the hand, was hastening to the higher beach near the life-station’s weed-grown stairs. Just then, riding a tremendous wave, the first life-boat--the one that bore Tatiana’s name--toppled half-over as it took the shore, and Marguerite vaguely saw her father and her uncle Jean leap into the whirling water, and receive from the abbé’s arms another limp and apparently lifeless body that somehow seemed all dislocated; but by this time the girl was past all emotion and listlessly looked on as they plunged forward with their burden.