It was on them.

Oh, horror!  Even in the turmoil of the boiling waters Beatrice felt the seaweed give.  Now they were being swept along with the rushing wave, and Death drew very near.  But still she clung to Geoffrey.  Once more the air touched her face.  She had risen to the surface and was floating on the stormy water.  The wave had passed.  Loosing her hold of Geoffrey she slipped her hand upwards, and as he began to sink clutched him by the hair.  Then treading water with her feet, for happily for them both she was as good a swimmer as could be found upon that coast, she managed to open her eyes.  There, not sixty yards away, was the boat’s light.  Oh, if only she could reach it.  She spat the salt water from her mouth and once more cried aloud.  The light seemed to move on.

Then another wave rolled forward and once more she was pushed down into the cruel depths, for with that dead weight hanging to her she could not keep above them.  It flashed into her mind that if she let him go she might even now save herself, but even in that last terror this Beatrice would not do.  If he went, she would go with him.

It would have been better if she had let him go.

Down she went—­down, down!  “I will hold him,” Beatrice said in her heart; “I will hold him till I die.”  Then came waves of light and a sound as of wind whispering through the trees, and—­all grew dark.

* * * * *

“I tell yer it ain’t no good, Eddard,” shouted a man in the boat to an old sailor who was leaning forward in the bows peering into the darkness.  “We shall be right on to the Table Rocks in a minute and all drown together.  Put about, mate—­put about.”

“Damn yer,” screamed the old man, turning so that the light from the lantern fell on his furrowed, fiercely anxious face and long white hair streaming in the wind.  “Damn yer, ye cowards.  I tells yer I heard her voice—­I heard it twice screaming for help.  If you put the boat about, by Goad when I get ashore I’ll kill yer, ye lubbers—­old man as I am I’ll kill yer, if I swing for it!”

This determined sentiment produced a marked effect upon the boat’s crew; there were eight of them altogether.  They did not put the boat about, they only lay upon their oars and kept her head to the seas.

The old man in the bow peered out into the gloom.  He was shaking, not with cold but with agitation.

Presently he turned his head with a yell.

“Give way—­give way! there’s something on the wave.”

The men obeyed with a will.

“Back,” he roared again—­“back water!”

They backed, and the boat answered, but nothing was to be seen.

“She’s gone!  Oh, Goad, she’s gone!” groaned the old man.  “You may put about now, lads, and the Lord’s will be done.”

The light from the lantern fell in a little ring upon the seething water.  Suddenly something white appeared in the centre of this illuminated ring.  Edward stared at it.  It was floating upwards.  It vanished—­it appeared again.  It was a woman’s face.  With a yell he plunged his arms into the sea.