each moment higher and loppier. But the huge mountain of water that
washed Muriel Ellis overboard was not a regular ordinary wave; it was
that far more powerful and dangerous mass, a shoal-water breaker. The
Australasian had passed at that instant over a submerged coral-bar, quite
deep enough, indeed, to let her cross its top without the slightest
danger of grazing, but still raised so high toward the surface as to
produce a considerable constant ground-swell, which broke in windy
weather into huge sheets of surf, like the one that had just struck and
washed over the Australasian, carrying Muriel with it. The very same
cause that produced the breakers, however, bore Felix on their summit
rapidly landward; and once he had got well beyond the region of the bar
that begot them, he found himself soon, to his intense relief, in
comparatively calm shoal water.

Muriel Ellis, for her part, was faint with terror and with the
buffeting of the waves; but she still floated by his side, upheld by the
life-belts. He had been able, by immense efforts, to keep unseparated
from her amid the rending surf of the breakers. Now that they found
themselves in easier waters for a while, Felix began to strike out
vigorously through the darkness for the shore. Holding up his companion
with one hand, and swimming with all his might in the direction where a
vague white line of surf, lit up by the red glare-of some fire far
inland, made him suspect the nearest land to lie, he almost thought he
had succeeded at last, after a long hour of struggle, in feeling his
feet, after all, on a firm coral bottom.

At the very moment he did so, and touched the ground underneath, another
great wave, curling resistlessly behind him, caught him up on its crest,
whirled him heavenward like a cork, and then dashed him down once more, a
passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured