t feel anything like it?"

"Like what?" I said, but the next minute I knew.

It _did_ feel like Simpson--soft and flannelly, with a round, bumpy
sort of head at one end.

"Oh, how did you do it!" I said. "Oh, Jerry, you brick!"

"I chopped a big piece out of your skirt," he said. "I hope you
don't mind. I happened to have the string off the sandwich bundle in
my pocket, and I squeezed up a head and tied it."

Greg was a little frightened when Jerry leaned over him suddenly.

"It's just me, Greg," Jerry said; "just Jerry-o. Here's Simpson, old
lamb."

I'd never heard Jerry's voice at all like that before. I don't know
whether Greg really thought it was Simpson, but he took it and
sighed--a long, quivery sort of sigh, the way very little children
do when they're asleep sometimes.

Then there was no sound at all but the different horrid noises that
the Monster made.

Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so
that he was quite tight against my knees. I asked him what was the
matter, and he said "Nothing." After a while, though, he said:

"Chris, I'd better tell you."

"What? Oh, what _is_ it?" I said.

"Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?" he asked.

"Yes," I said; "on the ebb. Don't you remember the rocks at
Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?"

"Well?" Jerry said.

I didn't understand for a minute, then I whispered:

"Do--you mean--"

"A wave just hit my foot," said Jerry in a low voice.

The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring. We thought
fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming
out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o'clock, so that the
tide must have been within about an hour of ebb. Therefore full
flood would be at eleven o'clock. But we hadn't any idea of whether
it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see
Jerry's watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand
Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly
maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at
all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was
the edge of another wavelet.

We knew that if the cave was going to be flooded we must get Greg
out of it before the water came much higher, but it was still
raining pitch-forks outside, and we didn't know whether to risk
waiting a bit longer or not.

"Perhaps there's sea-weed and we can feel high wate