rage of a storm-whipped sea. The
light was gone; here was only dark and beating water. Then a lightning
flash ripped wide the heavens over Ross as his head broke the surface
and he saw, with unbelieving eyes, that he was being thrust
shoreward--not to the strand of Finger Island--but against a cliff where
water pounded an unyielding wall of rock.

Ross comprehended that somehow he had been jerked through the gate, that
he was now fronting the land that had been somewhere beneath the heights
supporting the castle. Then he fought for his life to escape the hammer
of the sea determined to crack him against the surface of the cliff.

A rough surface loomed up before him, and he threw himself in that
direction, embracing a rock, striving to cling through the backwash of
the wave which had brought him there. His nails grated and broke on the
stone, and then the fingers of his right hand caught in a hole, and he
held with all the strength in his gasping, beaten body. He had had no
preparation, no warning, and only the tough survival will which had been
trained and bred into him saved his life.

As the water washed back, Ross strove to pull up farther on his
anchorage, to be above the strike of the next wave. Somehow he gained a
foot before it came. The mask of the gill-pack saved him from being
smothered in that curling torrent as he clung stubbornly, resisting
again the pull of the retreating sea.

Inch by inch between waves he fought for footing and stable support.
Then he was on the surface of the rock, out of all but the lash of
spray. He crouched there, spent and gasping. The thunder roar of the
surf, and beyond it the deeper mutter of the rage in the heavens, was
deafening, dulling his sense as much as the ordeal through which he had
passed. He was content to cling where he was, hardly conscious of his
surroundings.

Sparks of light along the shore to the north at last caught Ross's
attention. They moved, some clustering along the wave line, a few strung
up the cliff. And they were not part of the storm's fireworks. Men
here--why at this moment?

Another bolt of lightning showed him the answer. On the reef fringe
which ran a tongue of land into the sea hung a ship--two ships--pounded
by every hammer wave. Shipwrecks ... and those lights must mark castle
dwellers drawn to aid the survivors.

Ross crawled across his rock on his hands and knees, wavered along the
cliff wall until he was again faced with angry water.