Page:The Mystery of Choice - Chambers.djvu/288

276 in the air above it, squealing as it turned on its vast wings. Before I could speak we touched the beach, and I half lifted her to the shore.

"Quick!" I repeated. "We must not wait."

Her eyes were dark with fear, but she rested a hand on my shoulder, and we crept up among the dune grasses and sank down by the point of sand where the rough shelter stood, surrounded by the iron-ringed piles.

She lay there, breathing fast and deep, dripping with spray. I had no power of speech left, but when I rose wearily to my knees and looked out upon the water my blood ran cold. Above the ocean, on the breast of the roaring wind, three enormous birds sailed, turning and wheeling among each other; and below, drifting with the gray stream of the Gulf loop, a colossal bulk lay half submerged—a gigantic lizard, floating belly upward.

Then Daisy crept kneeling to my side and touched me, trembling from head to foot.

"I know," I muttered. "I must run back for the rifle."

"And—and leave me?"

I took her by the hand, and we dragged ourselves through the wire grass to the open end of a boiler lying in the sand.

She crept in on her hands and knees, and called to me to follow.