It was the hottest hour of the day. He had been fishing off the reef
of rocks where he had first seen her, and had taken in his line and was
leisurely pulling for the lighthouse. Suddenly a little musical cry not
unlike a bird's struck his ear. He lay on his oars and listened. It was
repeated; but this time it was unmistakably recognizable as the voice of
the Indian girl, although he had heard it but once. He turned eagerly
to the rock, but it was empty; he pulled around it, but saw nothing.
He looked towards the shore, and swung his boat in that direction,
when again the cry was repeated with the faintest quaver of a laugh,
apparently on the level of the sea before him. For the first time he
looked down, and there on the crest of a wave not a dozen yards ahead,
danced the yellow hair and laughing eyes of the girl. The frightened
gravity of her look was gone, lost in the flash of her white teeth and
quivering dimples as her dripping face rose above the sea. When their
eyes met she dived again, but quickly reappeared on the other bow,
swimming with lazy, easy strokes, her smiling head thrown back over
her white shoulder, as if luring him to a race. If her smile was a
revelation to him, still more so was this first touch of feminine
coquetry in her attitude. He pulled eagerly towards her; with a few long
overhand strokes she kept her distance, or, if he approached too near,
she dived like a loon, coming up astern of him with the same childlike,
mocking cry. In vain he pursued her, calling her to stop in her own
tongue, and laughingly protested; she easily avoided his boat at every
turn. Suddenly, when they were nearly abreast of the river estuary,
she rose in the water, and, waving her little hands with a gesture of
farewell, turned, and curving her back like a dolphin, leaped into the
surging swell of the estuary bar and was lost in its foam. It would have
been madness for him to have attempted to follow in his boat, and he
saw that she knew it. He waited until her yellow crest appeared in the