bore them.
The sound came from the waves that beat upon the Bryngelly reef.

"Where are we drifting to?" he cried.

"Into the breakers, where we shall be lost," she answered calmly. "Give
up paddling, it is of no use, and try to take off your coat. I have
loosened my skirt. Perhaps we can swim ashore."

He thought to himself that in the dark and breakers such an event was
not probable, but he said nothing, and addressed himself to the task
of getting rid of his coat and waistcoat--no easy one in that confined
space. Meanwhile the canoe was whirling round and round like a walnut
shell upon a flooded gutter. For some distance before the waves broke
upon the reef and rocks they swept in towards them with a steady
foamless swell. On reaching the shallows, however, they pushed their
white shoulders high into the air, curved up and fell in thunder on the
reef.

The canoe rode towards the breakers, sucked upon its course by a
swelling sea.

"Good-bye," called Geoffrey to Beatrice, as stretching out his wet hand
he found her own and took it, for companionship makes death a little
easier.

"Good-bye," she cried, clinging to his hand. "Oh, why did I bring you
into this?"

For in their last extremity this woman thought rather of her companion
in peril than of herself.

One more turn, then suddenly the canoe beneath them was lifted like a
straw and tossed high into the air. A mighty mass of water boiled up
beneath it and around it. Then the foam rushed in, and vaguely Geoffrey
knew that they were wrapped in the curve of a billow.

A swift and mighty rush of water. Crash!--and his senses left him.

CHAPTER IV

THE WATCHER AT THE DOOR

This was what had happened. Just about the centre of the reef is a large
flat-topped rock--it may be twenty feet in the square--known to the
Bryngelly fishermen as Table Rock. In ordinary weather, even at high
tide, the waters scarcely cover this rock, but when there is any sea
they wash over it with great violence. On to this rock Geoffrey and
Beatrice had been hurled by the breaker. Fortunately for them it was
thickly overgrown with seaweed, which to some slight extent broke the
violence of their fall. As it chanced, Geoffrey was knocked senseless by
the shock; but Beatrice, whose hand he still held, fell on to him and,
with the exception of a few bruises and a shake, escaped unhurt.

She struggled to her knees, gasping. The water had run off the rock, and
her companion lay qui