At the outermost edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him.

Boone swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.
The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped.
Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt.
A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled--a small trickle--Pierre lived.

He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and deeply blue.
It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen.

He turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off to bed.
And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy tonight.

This here one was given me by the will of--God." Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.
"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men.