immer might be pardoned
for looking askance at such a landing. And Whitaker had a woman to think
of and care for. Difficult to imagine how he was to drag her, and
himself, through that vicious, pounding surf, without being beaten to
jelly against the boulders....

As the next billow swung them high on its racing crest, he, gaining a
broader field of vision, caught an instantaneous impression of a stark
shoulder of the land bulking out through the mists several hundred yards
to the left; suggesting that the shore curved inward at that spot. The
thought came to him that if he could but weather that point, he might
possibly find on the other side a better landing-place, out of the more
forcible, direct drive of surf. It would be next to an impossibility to
make it by swimming, with but one arm free, and further handicapped by
the dead weight of the woman. And yet that way lay his only hope.

In that same survey he saw the _Trouble_, riding so low, with only bow
and coamings awash, that he knew she must be waterlogged, rolling
beam-on in to the beach. Of the two men from the other boat he saw
nothing whatever. And when again he had a similar chance to look, the
hapless power-boat was being battered to pieces between the boulders.
Even such would be their fate unless....

He put forth every ounce of strength and summoned to his aid all his
water wisdom and skill. But he fought against terrible odds, and there
was no hope in him as he fought.

Then suddenly, to his utter amazement, the lift of a wave discovered to
him a different contour of the shore; not that the shore had changed,
but his position with regard to it had shifted materially and in
precisely the way that he had wished for and struggled to bring about.
Instead of being carried in to the rock-strewn beach, they were in the
grip of a backwash which was bearing them not only out of immediate
danger, but at the same time alongshore toward the point under whose lee
he hoped to find less turbulent conditions.

It was quite half the battle--more than half; he had now merely to see
that the set of this backward flow did not drag them too far from shore.
Renewed faith in his star, a sense of possible salvation, lent strength
to his flagging efforts. Slowly, methodically, he worked with his charge
toward the landward limits of the current, cunningly biding the time to
abandon it. And very soon that time came; they were abreast the point;
he could see something of a b