“Can you catch hold?”

“All right.”  Both knew that swimming would be useless now; they were too near the upper apex of the sand-bank.

“The child first.  Here, Joey, my son! reach out and catch hold for your life.”

Taffy felt the child’s grip on the crutch-head, and drawing it steadily toward him hauled the poor child through.  The light from the cliff sank and rose behind his scared face.

“Got him?”

“Yes.”  The sand was closing around Taffy’s legs, but he managed to shift his footing a little.

“Quick, then; the bank’s breaking up.”

George was sinking, knee-deep and deeper.  But his outstretched fingers managed to reach and hook themselves around the crutch-head.

“Steady, now . . . must work you loose first.  Get hold of the shaft if you can:  the head isn’t firm.  Work your legs . . . that’s it.”

George wrenched his left foot loose and planted it against the mare’s flank.  Hitherto she had trusted her master.  The thrust of his heel drove home her sentence, and with scream after scream—­the sand holding her past hope—­she plunged and fought for her life.  Still as she screamed, George, silent and panting, thrust against her, thrust savagely against the quivering body, once his pride for beauty and fleetness.

“Pull!” he gasped, freeing his other foot with a wrench which left its heavy riding-boot deep in the sucking mud; and catching a new grip on the crutch-head, flung himself forward.

Taffy felt the sudden weight and pulled—­and while he pulled felt in a moment no grip, no weight at all.  Between two hateful screams a face slid by him, out of reach, silent, with parted lips; and as it slipped away he fell back staggering, grasping the useless, headless crutch.

The mare went on screaming.  He turned his back on her, and catching Joey by the hand dragged him away across the melting island.  At the sixth step the child, hauled off his crippled foot, swung blundering across his legs.  He paused, lifted him in his arms and plunged forward again.

The flares on the cliff were growing in number.  They cast long shadows before him.  On the far side of the island the tide flowed swift and steady—­a stream about fourteen yards wide—­cutting him from the farther sand-bank on which, not fifty yards above, lay the wreck.  He whispered to Joey, and plunged into it straight, turning as the water swept him off his legs, and giving his back to it, his hands slipped under the child’s armpits, his feet thrusting against the tide in slow, rhythmical strokes.

The child after the first gasp lay still, his head obediently thrown back on Taffy’s breast.  The mare had ceased to scream.  The water rippled in the ears as each leg-thrust drove them little by little across the current.