Then the two of them began their work of getting out of the cave. David, with his small, lithe body clad in tight-fitting hosen and jerkin, started to swim lightly through the water, diving headforemost into the beating breakers, and rounding toward the shore with rather a sense of pleasurable skill than anything else. But with Alixe, the case was different. Her long skirts were soaked with water, and clung disastrously about her feet. The idea of her swimming was vain; and she grimly gave thanks for her height. But she found that the matter of walking had its dangers too. The bottom of the cave and the outer stretch that lay between her and safety was very uneven. She stumbled over rocks and sank into sudden hollows, continually hampered by her clinging skirts. Presently she fell, and a great breaker came tumbling over her. In it she lost her self-control, and was presently rolling helpless in the tide, gasping in sea-water with every terrified breath, and unable to get her limbs free from their binding, clinging robe. Alixe was very near death in earnest, now, and she knew it. Presently, where a sweeping wave left her head for a moment above water, she sent one hoarse, guttural shriek toward David, who had regained the land; and he turned, horrified, to look at her. She heard his cry of amazement and distress, and then she was rolled upon her face, and knew nothing more till she found herself lying on the sand, with David bending over her, whiter than death, and trembling like a woman. She was dizzy and weak and sick, and her lungs ached furiously; yet with it all, she saw David’s distress, and managed to keep herself conscious by staring at him fixedly. “Up, Alixe! Up!” he muttered. “Thou _must_ get up to the Castle. I cannot carry thee there, and here thou’lt perish. Up, I say! Here, hold to my belt. See, the water is upon us again.” With an effort that seemed to her to be superhuman, Alixe struggled to her feet. He held her dripping skirts away from her, so that she could walk as little hampered as possible; and though she staggered and reeled at every step, they still made progress, and were halfway up the cliff before she collapsed again, utterly exhausted. Happily, at that moment, David spied the figure of Laure at the top of the cliff, and he cried to her with all the strength that was left him to come down. In a moment she was beside them, staring in silent astonishment at their plight. “The demoiselle Alixe had a fancy for bathing. She hath bathed,” observed David.