"Hold tight," the girl said, and swung the car off the road on to the rutted track along which Penny and the twins had been driven only about an hour before. The little car lurched and swayed as it headed straight for the great bank of shingle behind which the highest tide of the year was now thundering up the beach.

Some men, drenched and hatless, ran up the track and signalled the car to stop. The girl hesitated before braking, and one of them signed to her to lower the window.

"What's the fuss?" she said coolly. "I'm in a hurry."

The man's face was glistening with wet and he was fighting for breath.

"Turn her round," he gasped. "Turn her round quickly and take us to the nearest phone. It's urgent."

Another man pushed forward. "Buck up!" he shouted.

"The bank will go for certain when the tide's right up! Some of it is shifting now, they say."

The girl hesitated.

"I'm going to Beach View," she said. "We shan't be long, and then I'll drive back myself to the telephone."

A big lorry came lurching along behind them. The track here ran on a ridge a few feet higher than the flat marsh on the left and yet lower than some shingly hillocks which rose quite sharply on the right. Although two small cars might have managed to pass each other, there was no room for the huge lorry which so suddenly loomed up behind them. Looking out of the rear window, Jon could see that it was piled high with what looked like bundles of faggots. The driver, now leaning from his cab, switched on his headlights and kept his hand on the button of the horn. Several other men carrying spades and picks tumbled off the lorry and ran forward, and one of them put his hand on the door and shouted:

"We can't pass you. Get on or get out of the way. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," the girl said, "I'm going on."

Just at that moment, by some freak, the wind died down and, except for the roar of the sea, there was an odd, almost uncanny, silence. Voices, raised a few seconds before to be heard above the gale, now sounded harsh and hysterical. A man who was standing in the middle of the track was pointing urgently away to the left, where the great bank loomed over the sullen lagoon which Jon remembered seeing on the afternoon he had come with Penny to Beach View for the first time. The last gleams of daylight lingered over this pool and the ridge of the bank above as yet another man came running and stumbling madly towards them. Jon wound down his window suddenly, and in the strange lull they heard every word as he yelled: