he breaker and disappeared.
The mighty mass of water fell in thunder on the beach, but beyond
appeared a yellow head, one arm out-reaching, and a portion of a
shoulder. Only a few strokes was he able to make are he was come pelted
to dye through another breaker. This was the battle--to win seaward
against the Creep of the shoreward hastening sea. Each time he dived
and was lost to view Saxon caught her breath and clenched her hands.
Sometimes, after the passage of a breaker, they enfold not find him, and
when they did he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip
by a smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and be thrown
upon the beach, but at the end of half an hour he was beyond the outer
edge of the surf and swimming strong, no longer diving, but topping the
waves. Soon he was so far away that only at intervals could they find
the speck of him. That, too, vanished, and Saxon and Billy looked at
each other, she with amazement at the swimmer's valor, Billy with blue
eyes flashing.

"Some swimmer, that boy, some swimmer," he praised. "Nothing
chicken-hearted about him.--Say, I only know tank-swimmin', an'
bay-swimmin', but now I'm goin' to learn ocean-swimmin'. If I could do
that I'd be so proud you couldn't come within forty feet of me. Why,
Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than own a thousan'
farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you, like a fish--I swum,
one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge Pier to Sessions' Basin, an' that's
miles--but I never seen anything like that guy in the swimmin' line.
An' I'm not goin' to leave this beach until he comes back.--All by his
lonely out there in a mountain sea, think of it! He's got his nerve all
right, all right."

Saxon and Billy ran barefooted up and down the beach, pursuing each
other with brandished snakes of seaweed and playing like children for
an hour. It was not until they were putting on their shoes that they
sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy was at the edge of the
surf to meet him, emerging, not white-skinned as he had entered, but red
from the pounding he had received at the hands of the sea.

"You're a wonder, and I just got to hand it to you," Billy greeted him
in outspoken admiration.

"It was a big surf to-day," the young man replied, with a nod of
acknowledgment.

"It don't happen that you are a fighter I never heard of?" Billy
queried, striving to get some inkling of the identity of the physical
prodigy