ing with no speck of land in sight in the vast blue waste. Next moment, without warning, this island had suddenly clicked into sight, not a hundred yards ahead of the yawl.
David's stupefied eyes glimpsed the isle as a heavily forested mass of land, several miles across, towering to frowning black cliffs at its center. The shores were fringed with cruel, jagged rocks that showed like broken black fangs through the foam of wild waves breaking over them.
The yawl was running headlong onto these rocks, without chance of being turned in time. David, his face a gray mask of stupefied horror, dropped the wheel and yelled hoarsely.
"Christa! Quick!"
She came darting up the companionway, face white with alarm. "David, what"
He grabbed her. At that instant, with terrific, grinding shock, the yawl struck the rocks.
They were thrown clear of its wildly tilting deck by the impact. And almost instantly they were sinking in the roaring waters, David still blindly gripping his wife.
Thunder of the rushing waves was in his ears as they went down and down in the cold currents. He shifted his grip on Christa, and fought frantically with his other arm to rise. He came up, half strangled, to be nearly smothered by white foam and deafened by the roaring bellow of breaking waves.
They were flung like chips toward the jagged shore rocks. David struck out with his free arm in mad strokes to keep them away from the cruel stone fangs upon which the waves would hammer them to pulp. His left arm still gripped Christa with frantic strength as they were hurled forward.
His right shoulder grazed hidden rock, his shirt ripping and a brand of fire seeming to sear along his arm. As he was whirled around by the wild waves that were tossing them, he glimpsed the yawl, piled on the outer rocks, being hammered by the smashing waves.
The waves were hurling them on toward those menacing black teeth with the swiftness of a mill-race. A flat, jagged ledge rose a few feet from the foaming waters just ahead. The charging waves flung them hard against it.
David took the impact on his right shoulder, and felt the flesh bruise from the savage blow. With his numbed right arm he clawed wildly to cling to the edge of the ledge, a foot above his head. His fingertips gained the rim, then were torn loose as the receding waves sucked the two helpless humans back.
Back and back—and then again they bore them forward, like raging stallions of the sea, toward the ledge of rock. David felt his strength leaving him, knew desperately that he could not hold Christa longer, that if the waves swept them back out again, they would sink together.
The rushing waters again flung them like floating puppets against the rock. David's head hit the wall and he saw blinding light, felt the last remnants of strength melting from the stunning blow. Yet knowledge of death close at hand made him claw frenziedly for the ledge.
His fingers again gripped its brink—but his nerveless body had not the strength to haul them up onto it. Through the bellowing din, icy death seemed stooping to enfold them in his cold shroud. Then before the waters sucked back, a wave higher than the others lifted David and the girl a little. With a supreme effort, he used that moment to roll with her onto the ledge.
He lay there, hearing only dimly the
