Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/215

 rise it would be possible she thought to herself to save him yet. She made her way steadily and swiftly, cleaving the Mediterranean with her brown supple arms and keeping her head and throat well above water. It would have been better if she had had the boat, she knew; but it was ten yards off her, moored under the Sasso Scritto, and it would have wasted many minutes to unloose and launch it.

She rested on the waves a moment and watched for the man, who might be drowned and dead by now, to appear again; it was very dark upon the sea; the brief light of the parhelion had faded; the sun and its phantoms had alike gone from sight; there was only a dull red spent colour far away in the west, and the moon had not yet risen.

At last something came in sight; it would have been hard to tell what it might be in the dusk, and with the sea churned to white foam from the storm as it was.

But she swam to and seized it; she felt the round shape of a human head in her hand, and, being close to it, she saw the dusky bulk of a human body. The skull was close shaven, and there was nothing on the