It was her civilized intelligence, perhaps, that betrayed her now, for she turned her back to the sea for a moment, while she drank in the beauty of the feathery green palms and delicate tresses of the ironwood that waved along the shore. She was roused from her dreams by the familiar muffled roar of the approaching breaker, and she turned her head a few seconds too late to take the rush of it as it ought to have been taken. It was a giant and, for almost the first time in her life, she knew the sensation of fear in the sea, as the green crest crumbled into white high over her. In that instant, too, she caught a glimpse of a figure on the reef watching her. It was the figure of Rua, the boy who spoke English; and, as the breaker crashed down with all its tons of water over her head, she carried with her the impression that he was about to dive to her rescue. She was whirled helplessly, heels over head, downward and downward, then swept forward with the rushing whirlpools in the blackness below, like a reed in a subterranean river. She knew that if she could hold her breath long enough, she would rise to the surface; but she had reckoned without the perils of the gap in the reef. Twice she was whirled and caught against a jagged piece of coral, which would probably have killed her if it had struck her head. She took the warning, and held her arms in the best way she could to ward off any head-blow. A lacerated body would not matter so much as the momentary stunning that might prevent her from keeping afloat when she rose. At last, when it seemed that she could hold her breath no longer, she shot with a wild gasp to the surface again. She found that she was only half-way through the gap, not in mid-stream where she would have been comparatively safe, but in an eddy of boiling water, close to the reef and among sharp fangs of coral that made it impossible to swim. All that she could do, at the moment, was to hold on to the coral and prevent herself from being lacerated against it. The sharp edges of the little shells, with which it was covered here, cut her hands, as the water swirled her to and fro; but she held on, and looked round for help. Then she saw that she was not fated to receive help, but to give it; and, like lightning in a tropic night, the moment changed her world. She had no time to think it out now; for she saw the face of Rua, swirling up towards her through the green water, and it looked like the face of a drowned man. His head and arms emerged, and sank again, twice, before she caught him by the hand and drew him, with the strength of a woman fighting for life, to her side.