For an instant it
seemed that the back suction would hold her in its grip. She tore
herself from the grasp of the current. Enveloped in a blinding hail
of spray she struggled desperately to extricate herself from the
maelstrom in which she was involved before the resumption of the
larger seas should roll her over and over to destruction.
Already these larger seas were racing in from the open. To Carroll,
watching breathless and wide-eyed in that strange passive and
receptive state peculiar to imaginative natures, they seemed alive.
And the SPRITE, too, appeared to be, not a fabric and a mechanism
controlled by men, but a sentient creature struggling gallantly on
her own volition.
Far out in the lake against the tumbling horizon she saw heave up
for a second the shoulder of a mighty wave. And instinctively she
perceived this wave as a deadly enemy of the little tug, and saw it
bending all its great energies to hurrying in on time to catch the
victim before it could escape. To this wave she gave all her
attention, watching for it after it had sunk momentarily below its
fellows, recognising it instantly as it rose again. The spasms of
dismay and relief among the crowd about her she did not share at
all.
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