Fortunately, the spent swimmer was still near the shore--nearer, even, than when he had first fallen; for he was now close to the headland of Craig-Geal, and was already in shallow water, which swung on to a long shelf of sand lying against the entrance to another of the innumerable caverns of that side of the island. But here the sea, though at full-flood it covered the sand and moved its hungry lip for a few feet within, did not enter, as a beast of prey halting unassuaged at the entrance to its lair. Ghaoth had gripped him by the hair of his neck, and was now struggling to reach the shore. Man and dog were still flung to and fro by the waves; but the living sport of the sea was no longer separate. With Ghaoth's help, Alastair made renewed, if despairing, efforts. Suddenly his feet touched the ground for a moment. Then, with a staggering rush, having shaken himself free of the dog, he gained the shore, stumbled blindly up the low shelve of the sound, and fell unconscious among the soft, powdery grit, midway in the wide, half-roofless hollow known as the Cave of the Sùlaire, from the solan geese which often congregated there in the blinding snow-storms of winter. Ghaoth stood panting beside him awhile. At last, with a low whine, the dog pressed his muzzle against the white face in the white sand; turned aside, whined again, and came back with lolling tongue. Then, suddenly, he sprang away into the darkness, and back into the drowning surge, with all his loyal, loving heart--beautiful love of the dumb animal-soul that God heedeth and cherisheth no less than that other wandering fire He hath placed in the human--eager to baffle with drift and billow till he reached the cavern once more, in time to save Lora, of whose body he had caught a glimpse as he dashed after Alastair. In time, and no more. He had not long rescued Lora, who, also, had been partially roused by the shock of the breaking wave. She had been half-standing, half-leaning against the higher ledge, to which, with difficulty and in blind instinct, she had clung; but, as Ghaoth reached her, she sank wearily and lay back against the dog, dreaming she had waked in terror, but was now safe in Alastair's arms. It was thus that Angus Macrae discovered them. Long afterward the islesman recalled how he had seen the dog leap back into the darkness. Whether Ghaoth failed to reach the Cave of the Sùlaire, and was carried seaward by a current; or whether his strength failed him in his last effort, and he was swung lifelessly from wave to wave; whatever the first word of his fate was, the last was the finding of his sea-mangled body in the trawl-net of a fisherman more than a mile oceanward from Innisròn. * * * * *