I started counting from one to ten to keep myself from slackening, just as the cox of a racing-eight does when he forces his crew to swing out. I regarded my body impersonally, without sympathy, as though we were separate. When it suffered and the muscles ached, I lashed it forward with my will, silently deriding it with brutal profanities. The wind poured over the sea; the spray dashed up and nearly choked me. It was difficult to keep her in sight. When I saw her again, I smiled grimly at her courage and hit up a quicker pace. Who would have thought that her fragile body, so flower-like and dainty, had the strength and nerve to fight like that? I was far enough out now to catch her. I halted, treading water; but the inaction gave my imagination time to get to work, and, when that happened, I felt myself weakening. I started up against the current, going parallel with the beach, to meet her. The one obsessing thought in my mind was to get to her. It was not so much a thought as an animal instinct. I was reduced to the primitive man, brutally battling his way towards his mate at a time of danger. While I acted instinctively, the flesh responded; directly I paused to think, my body began to shirk and my strength to ebb. Somewhere in that raging waste of water I must find and touch her. I did not care to hear her voice--simply to hold her. Thirty feet away a gray riot of stampeding water rose against the horizon; in it I saw her face. With the swift trudging stroke of a polo-player I made towards her. In the foam and spray I saw what looked like golden seaweed. She was drifting past me; I caught her by the hair. Out of the mist of driven chaos we gazed in one another’s eyes. Her lips moved. “You!” she said.