to her knees in water, her strong young frame braced back and her arms clasping a body. A fringed comber, breaking heavily, was driving a vortex of white water in upon her. It boiled up beyond her, and the two figures were gone. As Colton, with a shout of horror, leaped forward, like a sprinter from the mark, he saw Haynes, running with terrific speed, launch himself head foremost into the swirl of waters, at a rolling mass there. 

 “Lord! What a tackle!” thought Colton as he ran. “Yet they say that a foot-ball education is of no practical use.” 

 His own was to come swiftly into play. For though Haynes had caught Helga about the knees, he had no purchase for resistance, and the deadly undertow was dragging them out. 

 Colton had the athlete’s virtue of thinking swiftly in the stress of action. His was the cool courage that appreciates peril and reasons out the most advantageous encounter. The human flotsam was far beyond his grasp now; but he figured that an approaching surge, sweeping them in shoreward again, would give him his chance,—the only chance,—for the recession in all probability would carry them beyond help. He must meet them feet forward, as a trained player meets and falls upon a foot-ball rolling toward him; thus he might get his heels into the sand, and so anchor them all against the back-drift. If he could not—well, there were no materia medica bottles out there beyond the surf anyhow, and an ocean lullaby would be the sure cure for all sleeplessness. 

 Fortunately the coming wave was a broad-backed one, on which the tangled figures rode in plain view, and Colton saw, with that thrill of pride in his fellow-being which courage wakes in the courageous, that the girl’s arms still clasped her trove, clinging below the life-preserver which was fastened around the man’s body. Calculating the drift down the beach, Colton moved forward. In they came—nearer—nearer—and to his amazement Colton heard a strangled shout from the waves: 

 “Get Helga! Never mind me. Get Helga in!” 

 “I’ll get you too, or break something,” muttered the young man, as with a rush and a leap he plunged feet forward to meet the onset. 

 It was Haynes that he caught, just above the knees. His heels sunk in the sand. The surge spread, stood, receded. “Here’s tug-of-war in earnest,” thought Colton, as he set the muscles which had helped to win many a victory for his college. The next instant it seemed as if those muscles must rend apart; as if 

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