There was light enough to see the ruffled, cruel surface of the river, where its sluggish forces swept into the bay. Idly bumping the grasses was something that brought Mary Bell's heart into her throat. Then she cried out in relief, for it was not the thing she feared, but the little deserted boat, right side up. "That means they left her!" said Mary Bell, trembling with nervous terror. She shouted again in the darkness, before turning for the homeward trip. It seemed very long. Once she thought she must be going aimlessly back and forth on the same bit of rail, but a moment more brought her to the missing rail again, and she knew she had been right. Blown by the wind, struck by the now flying rain, deafened by the gurgling water and the rising storm, she fought her way back to the fire again. The others were all there, and with them three cramped and chilled little boys, crying fright and relief, and clinging to the nearest adult shoulder. The Chinese boy and Grandpa Barry had found them, standing on a hummock that was still clear of the rising tide, and shouting with all their weary strength. "Oh, thank God!" said Mary Bell, her heart rising with sudden hope. "We'll get the others, now, please God!" said Henderson, quietly. "We were working too far over. You said they were all right when you left them, Lesty?" he said to one of the shivering little lads. "Ye-es, sir!" chattered Lesty, eagerly, shaking with nervousness. "They was both all right! Davy wanted to git Billy over to the fence, so if the tide come up!"--terror swept him again. "Oh, Mr. Henderson, git 'em--git 'em! Don't leave 'em drowned out there!" he sobbed frantically, clutching the big man with bony, wet little hands. "I'm going to try, Lesty!" Henderson turned back to the marsh, and Mary Bell went too. "Billy who?" said Mary Bell; but her heart told her, before Henderson said it, that the answer would be, "Jim Carr's kid brother!" "Are you good for this?" said Henderson, when the four fittest had reached that part of the marsh where the boys had been found. She met his look courageously, his lantern showing her wet, brave young face, crossed by dripping strands of hair. "Sure!" she said. "Well, God bless you!" he said; "God--bless--you! You take this fence, I'll go over to that 'n." The rushing, noisy darkness again. The horrible wind, the slipping, the plunging again. Again the slow, slow progress; driven and whipped now by the thought that at this very instant--or this one--the boys might be giving out, relaxing hold, abandoning hope, and slipping numb and unconscious into the rising, chuckling water.