Her skirt was dropped, even as she spoke.  She wore “sneaks” to-day instead of high boots, and she kicked them off without unlacing them.  Then, poising on the rail for a moment, she dived overboard on a long slant.

She swam under the surface for some fathoms and coming up dashed the water from her eyes to stare about.

The black squall had passed.  The sea dimpled in blue and green streaks as before.  A few whitecaps only danced about the girl.  Where Lawford had gone down——­

A round, sleek object—­like the head of a seal—­bobbed in the agitated water.  It was not ten yards away.  Had she not been so near she must have overlooked it.  He might have sunk again, going down forever, for it was plain the blow he had suffered had deprived Lawford of consciousness.

Louise wasted no breath in shouting, nor moments in looking back at Betty and the sloop.  All her life she had been confident in the water.  She had learned to ride a surfboard with her father like the natives in Hawaii.  A comparatively quiet sea like this held no terrors for Louise Grayling.

She dived in a long curve like a jumping porpoise, and went down after the sinking man.  In thirty seconds she had him by the hair, and then beat her way to the surface with her burden.

Lawford’s face was dead white; his eyes open and staring.  There was a cut upon the side of his head from which blood and water dribbled upon her shoulder as she held him high out of the sea.

There sounded the clash of oars in her ears.  How Betty had lowered the jib, thrown over the anchor, and manned the skiff so quickly would always be a mystery to Louise.  But the “able seaman” knew this coast as well, at least, as Lawford Tapp.  They were just over a shoal, and there was safe anchorage for a small craft.

“Give him to me.  Land sakes!” gasped Betty over her head.  “I never see no city gal like you, Miss Lou.”

Nor had Louise ever seen a woman with so much muscular strength and the knowledge of how to apply it as Betty displayed.  She lifted Lawford out of the girl’s arms and into the skiff with the dexterity of one trained in hauling in halibut, for Betty had spent her younger years on the Banks with her father.

Louise scrambled into the skiff without assistance.  Betty was already at the oars and Louise took the injured head of the man in her lap.  He began to struggle back to life again.

“I—­I’m all right,” he muttered.  “Sorry made such a—­a fool—­of—­myself.”

“Hush up, you!” snapped Betty.  “I’d ought to have seed to this skiff.  Then you wouldn’t have got battered like you did.”  A tear ran frankly down Betty’s nose and dripped off its end.  “If anything really bad had happened to you, Lawford, I’d a-never forgive myself.  I thought you was a goner for sure.”

“Thanks to you, I’m not, I guess, Betty,” he said more cheerfully.  He did not know who had jumped overboard to his rescue.