In his experience of twenty years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was at the bottom of the sea.

But the impulse to go on grew no less in Alan.

It quickened with the straining eagerness of the _Norden_ as the slim craft leaped through the water.
Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on.

To him there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make.

It was the least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept telling himself.