Will she be in time?
Perhaps hardly not, for the last rocket has been fired, and out of the goodly crew of seventeen men and a boy that left London but two weeks ago only nine are now alive. The rest have been swept away into the black, yawning seas, and washed shorewards to death on the turn of the tide.
Lotty is down below, for here is the captain's wife and baby, whom the little gipsy lass is doing her best to comfort. And she is thus engaged when her quick ear is sensible of knocking and scraping along the leeside bulwarks, and presently she cries aloud with joy, her eyes sparkling, her face sweetly flushed in the light of the lamp in gimbals.
'Saved, dear lady, saved!' she says to the skipper's wife. For she has heard strange voices on the deck, manly voices shouting strange orders high above the wail of wind and dash of raging sea.
She and her companions are soon lifted by some of the rescuers and carried as if babies in the strong arms of the rough but kindly men; and in a few minutes all are on board the lifeboat, the last man to throw himself in being the brave skipper himself.
Bob Stevens presently feels a tug at his arm, and a young girl's voice says in his ear, 'Do not try to beach her; the sea is high and the bottom is rock. Up the Burn o' Bogie with her. I'm going forward,' continued the voice; and Bob said, many a time after this, it sounded to him like the voice of a seraph—'I'm going forward with my flashlight, and will guide you safe up the burn.'
It is needless to say that the voice was Lotty's, and next minute she was as far forward as one could get in a boat like this, with the light in her hand. She could see the fearful, roaring white of the seas that dashed on shore; but there were hills with their black heads yonder too, and it was by these she kept the course, till, with boiling waves high and threatening on both sides of her, the lifeboat glided into the still, deep waters of the Burn o' Bogie.
It was Antony himself who lifted Lotty from the bows and landed her safe on shore; and in all the vast crowd, that had gathered from every part of the country, hardly was there a dry eye or a heart that did not throb with joy in thinking of the brave deed done this night by the little gipsy lass.
. . . . . . .
'And to think, my dear,' said Mrs Oak the skipper's wife of the lost bark Cumberland, as she was leaving for the south two or three weeks after this, 'that I may never have a chance of doing you a favour for all your brave kindness to us! Oh surely,' she added as she pressed Lotty's hand, and would not let it go, 'the King himself will hear of your gallantry and pluck, and thank you. Good-bye, Lotty, oh good-bye, and God be with you aye!—Kiss the child, James,' she said to her husband; 'kiss the darling that saved our lives.'