Page 95

 
headland running down to the sea, where he was forced to plunge into the mangroves and pick his way through tangled brush ankle-deep in oozing black mud.
He was on the point of stumbling out on to the beach on the further side when he came to an abrupt standstill, mentally demanding if he were delirious or whether he actually saw a neat little jetty running out into the sea, with an equally neat launch moored at its side, and whether it was a mermaid or one of flesh and blood sporting in the surf not a hundred yards distant.
 
The latter wore a trim blue bathing dress and pushed a surf board in front of her- mermaids and surf boards were surely incompatible.
He watched her, transfixed.
She waited for a gigantic breaker from the reef that it seemed must surely catch and dash her bruised and senseless on the beach, then leapt on to the board, first lying, then kneeling, then standing, as she shot like a meteor for shore, borne on a cascade of foam.
 
Carrying the board high on to the beach, she lay in the hot sand sunning herself, while for the third time Drummond asked himself what he ought to do, and answered the question by craning his neck round a mangrove trunk and remaining where he was.
There were palpably only two courses open- to advance or retreat- and as, after due deliberation, he determined there was really no cause for the latter, he stepped from shelter.
An expression of amazement, almost horror, flashed into the piquant little sun-kissed face that looked up into his as the girl's hands leapt to the short blue skirt and tugged its damp folds to greater length.