t long enough to reach it, he thought, glancing at
her.

"Why don't you turn about and run before the wind?" he asked.

"Can't turn now," she muttered. "Wave hit her side, turn over quick."

Sam looked ashore again. For upwards of a furlong off the edge of the
flats the breakers were ruling their parallel lines of white. Above
all the other noises of the storm the continuous roaring of these
waters reached their ears.

"You could land there," he suggested. "What if we did get turned out?
It's shallow."

She was not going to tell him the real reason she could not land. "I
lose my boat," she muttered.

"Better lose the boat than lose yourself," he muttered sullenly.

Bela did not answer this. She paddled doggedly, and Sam bailed. He saw
her glance from time to time toward a certain point inland. Seeing her
face change, he followed the direction of her eyes, and presently
distinguished, far across the flats, three tiny horses with riders
appearing from among the trees.

They were proceeding in single file around the bay. Even at the
distance one could guess they were galloping. So that was why she
would not land!

Sam did not need to be told who the three riders were. His sensations
on perceiving them were mixed. It was not difficult for him to figure
what had happened when his absence had been discovered, and he was not
at all sure that he wished to escape from his mysterious captor only
to fall into those hands.

This line of thought suddenly suggested a possible reason why he had
been carried off--but it was too humiliating to credit. He looked at
her with a kind of shamed horror. Her face gave nothing away.

By and by Sam realized with a blessed lightening of the heart that the
storm had reached its maximum. The gusts were no longer increasing in
strength; less water was coming over the bow. Not until he felt the
relief was he aware of how frightened he had been.

Bela's face lightened, too. Progress under the cruel handicap was
still painfully slow. The wind was like a hand thrusting them back;
but every gain brought them a little more under the lee of the land.
If Bela's arms held out! He looked at her wonderingly. There was no
sign of any slackening yet.

"We not sink now," she said coolly.

"Good!" cried Sam.

In their mutual relief they could almost be friendly.

Bela was heading for the intake of the river. Along the tortuous
course of that stream she knew a hundred hiding-places. The land tr