"It is!" cried Isobel. "Let us hold the flag up higher, and we'll call 'Help!' as loud as we can. Sound carries so far over water, perhaps they might hear us."
"Ahoy there!" yelled Charlie, with the full strength of his lungs. "Boat ahoy!" And Hilda and Isobel joining in, they contrived amongst them to raise a considerably lusty shout.
To their intense relief it seemed to be heard, as the ship tacked round, and bearing down upon them, very soon came up alongside.
"Well, of all sights as ever I clapped eyes on! Four bairns adrift in an open craft! I thought summat was up when I see'd your flag, and then you hollered.—Easy there, Jim. Take the little 'un on first. Mind that lad! He'll be overboard!—Whisht, honey! don't take on so. You'll soon be safe back with your ma.—Now, missy, give me your hand. Ay, you've been up to some fine games here, I'll wager, as you never did ought. But there! Bairns will be bairns, and I should know, for I've reared seven."
"Mr. Binks!" cried Isobel, to whom the ruddy cheeks, the bushy eyebrows, and the good-natured conversational voice of her friend of the railway train were quite unmistakable.
"Why, it's little missy as were comin' to Silversands!" responded the old man. "To think as I should 'a met you again like this! I felt as if somethin' sent me out this mornin' over and above callin' at Ferndale for a load of coals, which would 'a done to-morrow just as well. It's the workin's of Providence as we come on this tack, or you might 'a been right out to sea, and, ten to one, upset in that narrer bit of a boat."
It certainly felt far safer in Mr. Binks's broad-bottomed fishing-smack, though they had to sit amongst the coals and submit to be rather searchingly and embarrassingly catechised as to how they came to be in such a perilous situation. Their plight had been noticed at last from the harbour, where the owner of the boat, missing his craft, had raised a hue-and-cry, and there was quite a little crowd gathered to meet them on the jetty when they landed, a crowd which expressed its satisfaction at their timely rescue, or its disapproval of their escapade, according to individual temperament.
"Praise the saints ye're not drownded entoirely!" cried Biddy, giving Charlie a smacking kiss, much to his disgust. "And it's ould Biddy Mulligan as saw the peril ye was in, and asked St. Pathrick and the Blessed Virgin to keep an eye on yez. Holy St. Bridget! but ye're a broth of a boy, afther all."
"I'm main set to give you a jolly good hidin'," growled the owner of the boat, greeting Charlie with a somewhat different reception, and fingering a piece of rope-end as if he were much tempted to put his threat into execution. "Don't you never let me catch you on this quay again, meddlin' with other folk's property, if you want to keep your skin on you."
"He really was most dreadfully angry," Isobel told her mother in the graphic account which she gave afterwards of the adventure. "But Charlie said how very sorry we were. He took the whole blame to himself, though it wasn't all his fault by any means, and he offered to pay for having borrowed the boat. Then the man said he spoke up like a gentleman, and he wouldn't take his money from him; and Mr. Binks said bairns would be bairns, and it was a mercy we hadn't gone to the bottom; and the man shook hands with Charlie, and said he was a plucky little chap, with a good notion of handling a sail, and he'd take him out some time and show him how to do it properly. And Mr. Binks said I'd never been to see him yet, and I told him you'd sprained your ankle and couldn't walk, but it was getting better nicely, and you'd soon be able to; and he said, would we write and give him warning when we'd made up our minds, and his missis should bake a cranberry cake on purpose, and if we came early, he'd row us over to see the balk. I said we should be very pleased, because you'd promised before that you'd go. So you will, won't you, mother?"