Geoffroi’s position was (for him) extremely dangerous.  A bold climber might have extricated himself; but for a lame man to reach safety across the sea-scourged rocks was almost impossible.  Could he hold on long enough and the sea rose no higher, he might be saved:  but there would yet be an hour before the turn of the tide, and already the waves were racing over the ledge on which he stood.  Antoine sprang over the intervening rocks, scrambling and wading through the water, as if not seeing what he did, till he set foot on the ledge, and stood face to face with his enemy.

Geoffroi’s face was white with fear.  He knew his hour was come.  In the mighty strife of the elements, within an inch of death on every side, he was at Antoine’s mercy.

“Don’t kill me,” he cried abjectly.  “Have mercy, for the love of God.”

Antoine grasped the writhing creature by the shoulder.  The white face of Marie rose up before him.  Geoffroi shrieked.  A huge, heaving billow advanced, swept round the feet of both and sank boiling in the gulf beneath.  The next that came would leave neither of them there.  Antoine stood with his hand on Geoffroi’s shoulder, as if he would crush it.  Somewhat higher, but within reach, was a narrow projection in the rock, to which there was room for one to cling, and only for one:  and Geoffroi with his lame foot could not reach it alone.

“Let me go,” he shrieked.  “I will confess all:  but save me, save me!”

Suddenly another wave of feeling surged up in the soul of Antoine.  He seemed to see the cross on the hill side, as it stood in light that evening when he was to have met Marie there.  He saw the good God on the cross again, as he used to see Him in the chapel.  He had a strange, deep feeling that he was God, or that God was he.  He seemed to be on that cross himself.  The great, green wave towered above them twenty feet in air.  He grasped Geoffroi by both shoulders, and flung him up to the ledge above with a kind of scorn.  The next moment the rolling sea descended.  Antoine clung with all his force to the rock, but he knew that he should never see the light again.

So was he drawn out into the great deep, in whose arms his father lay:  and the fisher-folk, when they knew it, looked for no sign of him more, for they said he had gone back to the sea, from whence he came.  For, though they never knew the true story of his death, they felt that a spirit of a different mould from theirs had passed from among them in his own way.

[Illustration:]

TWICE A CHILD.