The Pulaskian., 1917-02-23

| ! high upon it's great glassy shoulder. They fought madly to retain that place. and to such purpose that they rode it over dozen yards before 1t crashed upon the beach, annihilating itself in 1urlous welter of creaming waters, Whitaker felt land beneath his feet. The rest was like the crisis of a nightmare drawn out to the limit of human endurance. The undertow tore at Nhitaker's legs as with a hundred murderous hands. He came out of it eventually to find himself well up on the beach leaning against the careened hulk of dismantled eatboat with gaping rent in it's side. At little dis tance the woman was sitting in the sands, bosom and shoulders heaying eonVulsively, damp, matted hair yelling her like curtain of sunlit seaweed.
 lie moved with painful effort toward her. She turned up to him her pitiful, Writhen face, white as parchment.
 Are you-hurt?" he managed to ask. Il mean-injured?"
 She moved her head from side to side, as if she could not speak for pant ing.
 "fm-glad," he said duly. "You stay-here I'll go get help."
 He raised his eyes, peering inland.
 Back of the beach the land rose in long, sweeping hillocks, treeless but green. His curiously befogged vision made out number of shapes that re- sembIed dwellings.
 "Go get help ;" he repeated thiekly.
 He started off with brave, stagger- ing rush that carried him a dozen feet inland. Then his knees turned to wa ter, and the blackness of night shut down upon his senses.
 
 When Whitaker aweke the afternoon was cloudy-warm and bright, so that his eyes were grateful for the shade of q white parasol that girl was holding over him. He grew suspicious of his senses; and when the parasol was transformed into the shape of wom- an wearing a clumsy jacket of soiled covert cloth over a nondescript gar ment of weirdly printed calico-then he was sure that something was wrong with him.
 Besides, the woman suddenly turned and bent over him an anxious face, ex- claiming in accents of consternation 70 dear! If he's delirious-!"
 His voice, when he strove to answer, rustled and rattled so that he barely managed to say: "What nonsense I'm just thirstyr"
 II thought you would be-" said the woman, calmly; "so I brought water. Here
 She offered tin vessel to his lips. He sat up suddenly, seized the vessel and buried his face in it, gradually tilt ing it, while it's cool, delicious sweet ness irrigated his arid tissues, until every blessed drop was drained. Then, and not till then, he lowered the pail and with sane vision began to renew acquaintance with the world.
 He was sitting in the lee of the beached catboat. The woman he had
 
 was still booming overhead, but now with less force Cor so he fancied) and the surf still crashed in thunders on the beach hundred feet or more away; but the haze was lighter, and the blue of the sky was visible, if tar nished.
 The sands curved off in wide cres- cent, ending in a long, sandy spit. There was low, ragged earth bank rising from the sands. Midway be- tween the beach and where the hay uplandS lifted their blurred profile against the faded sky, stood com- monplace farmhouse, in good repair, strongly constructed and neatly paint ed; with a brood of out buildings. Here and there, in scattered groups and singly, sheep foraged.
 With puzzled eyes Whitaker sought counsel and enlightenment of the wom- an, and found in her appearance quite as much to confound anticipation and deepen perplexity. What she had worn the night before he could not say; but it certainly could have had
 
 nothing in common with the worn, stained, misshapen jacket covering her shoulders, beneath it the calico wrap per scant and crude beyond belief, up- on her feet the rusty wrecks that once had been shoes.
 AS for himself, his once white fian- nel trousers were precious souvenirs, even though the cloth had contracted to an alarming extent-uncomfortab as well; while his tennis shoes re- mained tolerably intact, and the can- vas brace had shrunk upon his ankle | until it gripped it like wise.
 But these details he absorbed rather l than studied, in the frs. few moments | subsequent to his awakening. His | chiefest and most direct interest cen- tered upon the woman. There was | warm color in the cheeks that he had | A ..o,x. 1ixy;d fhnrp was the w0ntpd |