all the might of the unbounded ocean was straining to drag away his prize of lives. He set his face grimly toward the savage waves. His chest was bursting. One heartbeat more he would hold out. Human endeavour could go no further. That heart-throb sledged against his ribs, passed and found the bulldog grip unrelaxed. One more, then! surely the last; after that—abruptly the strain slacked. 

 A sob of compressed breath burst from Colton. Oh, how good was the full, deep inhalation that followed! How it filled the muscles and inspired the will to the final effort! With a mighty heave he rolled the three clear over his own body up the beach. Then he lay still, for he was tired and sleepy and didn’t care what became of him. He had made a touch-down—anyway. Why didn’t—somebody—pull—them off—him? 

 “I’ve got ’em!” twittered a voice in his ear, a dim and ridiculous voice, that nevertheless was like old Johnston’s. “You saved the lot, God bless you!” 

 “Let me get my arm under his shoulder,” said the calm and precise accents of Professor Ravenden, also in that strange faraway tone. 

 Oh, thought Dick in sudden but dim enlightenment, they were telephoning. Of course. That’s the way voices sounded over a ’phone when the wire was working badly. But why should they be telephoning? And how, at the other end of a wire, could they be hauling him, Dick Colton, to his feet? 

 When consciousness came in on the full flood, Colton found himself staggering toward the fire, with someone’s support. From out the flickering circle of light an angel came to meet him. She seemed a thing born of the wedding of radiance and shadows. The whiteness of her face, rich-hued where the blood flushed the cheek, was enhanced by the dusky masses of her hair. Her lips were parted, and her rounded chest rose and fell palpably with her swift breathing. Her eyes, deep, velvety with the soft glamour of questing womanhood in their liquid depths, looked straight into his. It was his Vision of the hallway. 

 “Ah, it was splendid!” she said, and there was a thrill in the soft drawl of the voice that went straight to his heart. 

 She moved forward toward him into the fuller glow of the fire, and Colton, his hungry eyes fixed on hers, thought of the moon emerging from behind a filmy cloud. 

 “How did you dare?” she pursued. “You saved them all! I—I—want you to take this.” 

 

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