"What's the matter?" asked Ruth, startled.

"Look!" he said. He pointed toward the sh.o.r.e. The path of rocks was broken midway by a stretch of water. The tide had risen, cutting off the retreat to the beach.

CHAPTER X

TOO MUCH REALISM

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Ruth. It seemed a silly, futile thing to say, but, perhaps, very natural under the circ.u.mstances. Ruth arose, and put her arms about her sister, who tottered a little as she stood upright.

"The tide has risen?" asked Alice, and her tone was questioning.

"That's what has happened," went on Paul. "Pshaw! I ought to have kept watch of it. Russ was gone longer than I thought. But here we are now, fairly caught."

"Can't we--can't we wade back to sh.o.r.e?" faltered Alice.

"I wouldn't like to have you try it," answered Paul, and he moved over closer to the girl.

"Why not?" she asked. "I'm not at all afraid of getting wet, and it can't be so very deep over those rocks--not yet."

"It isn't that you would get wet," Paul answered. "But the rocks were slippery enough as they were. Covered with water, as they now are between us and the sh.o.r.e, I'm afraid you'd slip off, especially as your ankle will give you a twinge if you twist it."

"It certainly will," agreed Alice. "It hurts worse now. But oh! We must get back to sh.o.r.e!" she exclaimed. "We must!"

"We--I--I think I could lift her over the place where the water is,"

said Ruth.

"But you might both slip in," objected Paul. "And the water is quite deep on either side of this ledge of rocks. You see the ocean washes in against them, and scoops out the sand. So that there is a deep channel, ten feet or more, right alongside of the ledge of rocks. If you fell in there----"

"Oh, don't speak of it!" begged Alice. "I wouldn't mind swimming if I were prepared for it but it isn't exactly Summer yet, and with a disabled foot----"

"It isn't to be thought of," finished Ruth. "But we _must_ get ash.o.r.e somehow, Paul. The water is getting higher every minute."

"Yes, the tide has just begun to come in," said the young actor. "I should have noticed it before, but I didn't. Now I wonder--"

He did not finish, but gazed back toward the beach, nearly a quarter of a mile away. To his surprise, and also alarm, not one of the members of the moving picture company was in sight.

"That's strange," thought Paul, but he did not speak his thought aloud.

"Oh!" screamed Alice, so suddenly as to startle them all.

"What is the matter?" demanded Ruth.

"A wave splashed right up behind me! Look!"

The rising wind was sending little waves over the outer edge of the small island of rocks on which the three were marooned. It was another evidence that the tide was getting higher and higher.

"What _shall_ we do?" asked Ruth.

"We must get help--_somehow_!" Alice said. Then she looked sh.o.r.eward, in the direction Paul was gazing, and she uttered the single expression:

"Oh!"

But it was fraught with meaning.

"Why--they've gone!" gasped Ruth. "What--what----"

"They'll be back!" Paul interrupted. "Probably Mr. Pertell just thought of some scene he could get, and he took them off down the beach to put them all in it. They'll be back in a little while, and then we can signal to them."

"If--if it isn't too--too late!" faltered Alice.

"Too late? What do you mean?" demanded her sister.

"I mean these rocks will soon be covered, and covered deep, too," Alice said. "The high water mark is away above them."

"Is it, Paul?" demanded the older girl. She wanted the statement of Alice disproved.

"I'm afraid it is," the young actor made answer. "And the tide, I am sorry to say, is likely to be unusually high today. The moon has something to do with it. But we will be taken off before then."

"Suppose we aren't?" asked Alice. "The wind and the sea are rising, and if we are swept off the rocks----"

"Don't be so tragic about it!" broke in Ruth. "If we are to go to sea, and be in a shipwreck, even if it is only pictured, we must learn to face perils. And here we are only a little way from sh.o.r.e."

"That's right!" cried Paul. "That's the way to look at it, Alice.

There's no danger!"

"That's easy enough for you to say--you two who haven't a lame ankle,"

the younger girl said, seriously enough. "But I don't believe I can even swim!"

"There will be no need of that," Paul said. "They are sure to come back and see our plight soon. I can't see what's keeping Russ. He promised to come back as soon as he fixed up another camera. It's very strange."

Later they learned that when Russ and Mr. Pertell got back to the beach, leaving, as they supposed Ruth, her sister and Paul safe on the rocks, Pop Snooks, the veteran property man, discovered a certain nook that would answer for an important scene in the play. Wishing to take advantage of it at once, while the light was good, Mr. Pertell ordered the entire company over there to go through the prescribed "business."

He took Russ and the two other camera operators with him, to make sure of getting at least one film.

That is why the beach opposite the rocks where the three were marooned by the rising tide, was deserted just then. For the time both Mr.

Pertell and Russ forgot their three friends, or, if they thought of them at all, it was to think that they were perfectly safe, and would come to no harm by waiting a bit.

The tide rose higher and higher. In a few minutes it would lap the feet of the three marooned ones. A desperate resolve came into Paul's mind.

"I'll swim, or wade, to sh.o.r.e," he said, "and get a boat."

"And leave us here?" demanded Alice.

"Yes. There is nothing else to be done," he answered, desperately.

"No, please don't go!" begged Alice, putting a detaining hand on his arm. "I can't bear to be left here."