It was cold,
and, when I first entered, struck a chill into me. But presently, as I
walked out into the deepening waters, with the sparkling reflection of
the sun in my eyes from a thousand facets of ripples, I began to grow
warm. I reached water waist-high, and next moment I was swimming.

The tide sucked at me in a strong current, and soon, I perceived, would
carry me across the _Sea Queen's_ bows unless I made a struggle. The
water was racing under me, and I felt that my strength was as nothing
compared with it. I was thrown this way and that as the flood moved. My
passage had been taken incredibly quick, and now I was conscious that I
was past the level of the yacht, and I turned and battled back. So far
as I could see, I made no impression on the space that separated me
from her, and I began to despair of reaching the yacht. In my mind I
revolved the possibility of going with the flood and trusting to work
ashore at the tail of the island. If that were not practicable, I was
lost, for I should be blown out to the open sea.

Just as these desperate reflections crossed my mind, the _Sea Queen's_
stern, off which I was struggling, backed. She came round to the wind
and jammed, so that the flutter of canvas which she still carried
cracked above the voice of the seas. Then her nose swung right round
upon me, with the bubble under her cutwater. It was almost as if she
had sighted a doomed wretch and was come to his assistance. Her
broadside now broke the tide for me, and I began to see that I was
creeping up to her, and, thus encouraged, step by step made my way
until at last I reached her, and by the aid of a trailing sheet got
aboard. It had been half an hour since I left the island.

Once aboard, I waved across the intervening stretch of sea to my
friends, and looked about me. There was no sign or sound of life
anywhere on the yacht. She swung noisily, with creaks and groans, to
the pulse of the tide, but there was no witness to human presence
there. Mademoiselle immediately was in my thoughts, and I found my way
to the state-rooms to reassure her, if she should be awake. They were
as we had left them, save that every cabin had been ransacked and every
box turned inside out. The cabins were empty, and so was the _boudoir_.
Clearly, Mademoiselle Trebizond was not there. I went down into the
saloon, but nothing rewarded me there; and afterwards I turned along
the passage that led to the officers' quarters, and farther