was aboard and busy at the sail, while Alice Woodward, deeming the danger over, began to cry helplessly, and even Marjory breathed again. Only for a moment, however; the next, though the sail was down, she realised that the boat was still in the current, and that Paul was vainly trying to tear up a thwart. The rudder! the rudder must have gone adrift in Sam's clumsy efforts to ship it! Then they were no better off than before--nay, worse! since they were nearer those unseen rocks, and he--_he_ was in danger now. What was to be done? The thought was agonising as, scarcely knowing why, she kept abreast of the drifting boat, stumbling over the boulders, slipping on the seaweed, unable to see, to think, to do anything save listen to the ominously rising roar of the water which just beyond the turn fell in a regular cascade over that black jagged shelf of rock. Ah, those helpless children! and Paul! She must do something--try to do something. And then on a sudden it came to her, as such things do come, as if they had all been settled beforehand clear and connected. At the last spit of land, not fifty yards above the fall, a streak of sand bank, capped by a pile of boulders, jutted out. If she could cross the dip and reach them! The herons used to sit there till well on to half-tide, and once she and Will had found oysters. The trivial thoughts came, as they will come in times of stress, flashing through the brain without obscuring it. Even as she thought them, her mind was busy over the one certainty, that somehow she must give help! By cutting across the next grassy curve she would be there in time. They might think she was deserting them. What then? If she could succeed even so far, _he_ would know that it was not so--_he_ would understand that she meant to be nearer--nearer. He did; and a great glow of pride in her pluck came to him, when, as the boat swept round the curve, he saw her floundering, half swimming towards the boulders, and at the sight bent quickly for a coil of rope. But she had not thought of that--her one impulse having been to get nearer. And now she is as far as she can go. Sheer at her feet, sliding among the stones, is the stream--below her is the roar and rush of the fall, save to her left, where it shelves to an eddy--above her is the boat drifting, drifting, more slowly now, for the shelf of rock backs the water a little. Then for the first time she realises what is to be done, for there is Paul at the bows with the coil poised in his hand. Of course! that was it! that was it! She dug her heels into the crevices of the boulders as she stood knee-deep among them, and kept her eyes upon his face. "Now!"