A decent, albeit foolish, instinct told her to wade to the sound of the guns. Looking down, she saw that she would have to swim, rather than wade, and that the surf would bang her around like a pachinko ball among the pillars, foamed with knife-edged oyster shells and barnacles. She had only one course of action, which was to turn her back on whatever had just happened and make her way back toward shore. And she needed to act on it now, before the water got any deeper.