stopped and rubbed the object-glass with his handkerchief. But even when
he applied the glass to his eye for a second time, he could scarcely
believe his eyesight. For the object seemed to be a WOMAN, the lower
part of her figure submerged in the sea, her long hair depending over
her shoulders and waist. There was nothing in her attitude to suggest
terror or that she was the victim of some accident. She moved slowly
and complacently with the sea, and even--a more staggering
suggestion--appeared to be combing out the strands of her long hair with
her fingers. With her body half concealed she might have been a mermaid!

He swept the foreshore and horizon with his glass; there was neither
boat nor ship--nor anything that moved, except the long swell of the
Pacific. She could have come only from the sea; for to reach the rocks
by land she would have had to pass before the lighthouse, while the
narrow strip of shore which curved northward beyond his range of view he
knew was inhabited only by Indians. But the woman was unhesitatingly
and appallingly WHITE, and her hair light even to a golden gleam in the
sunshine.

Pomfrey was a gentleman, and as such was amazed, dismayed, and cruelly
embarrassed. If she was a simple bather from some vicinity hitherto
unknown and unsuspected by him, it was clearly his business to shut up
his glass and go back to his garden patch--although the propinquity of
himself and the lighthouse must have been as plainly visible to her as
she was to him. On the other hand, if she was the survivor of some wreck
and in distress--or, as he even fancied from her reckless manner, bereft
of her senses, his duty to rescue her was equally clear. In his dilemma
he determined upon a compromise and ran to his boat. He would pull out
to sea, pass between the rocks and the curving sand-spit, and examine
the sands and sea more closely for signs of wreckage, or some overlooked