but as far as we could tell there was no sea-weed at all.

"That doesn't help us much," Jerry said, "because we don't know
whether the tide is really full now and has covered it, or whether
it just doesn't grow here."

We curled our feet under us and waited. We could hear the water
sloshing around very close to us. Once when I put out my hand it
went right into a cold pool. It was then that Jerry had a most
wonderful idea. I heard his knife snap open again and asked him what
it was this time.

"If I take the crystal off my watch," he said, "I can feel where the
hands are."

I heard the little clicking pop that the front of a watch makes when
you pry it off, and I knew he was feeling the hands very gently.

"The little one's in line with the winder stem thing," he said, "and
the big one--Chris, it's about twenty minutes of twelve. The water
_can't_ come any higher. We must have had the worst of it."

It was queer that I cried then, because I hadn't felt at all like
crying when we thought that the cave would be flooded.

Greg had been quiet for so long that it frightened me suddenly, and
I groped after him to be sure that he was all right. I found his
hand, and I couldn't believe that it was really hot when ours were
so cold. His forehead was hot, too, and dry, in spite of his hair
being damp still from the rain. He curled his hand into mine and