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There was much rubbish strewn along the beach. Miss Sullivan could see old waterlogged slabs, logs purple with long drowning, pieces of spar, a plank or so. As she descended and looked over the nearer sands, she saw more rubbish; more than usual, perhaps of a recent wreck. Such a storm could hardly pass without touching the pockets of jolly underwriters—less jolly over their noon sandwich as the telegraph told of ships ashore.

The path began to skirt the edge of the broken cliff, and finally descended rapidly, by a series of dangerous stepping places, toward the level. It was quite evident there had been a wreck. The water deepened very slowly out from the shore, and each swell, as it swept in, drove along bits or masses of wreckage, and retiring, dragged them back, to be again heaved farther up.

Miss Sullivan had never before seen a wreck. She suddenly seemed very curious to examine this one nearer,—passionately curious, indeed,—and began to leap down the hillside rather precipitately. However, she was now used to Dan’l’s boots; otherwise her headlong speed would have been dangerous. She found it rather deep trudging in the sand, deeper and more difficult as she ran rapidly down after the returning waves; and she found it a struggle for her own life in the undertow, as she resolutely plunged forward and, grasping some wrecked fragments, fought with so much desperate womanish force as she had to drag them in to shore and safety.