"Look! look!" cried Creggan. "Can you see it, Daddy? High and dark on Lorna's rock! The boat, the boat, with the waves sweeping past and over it!"
The hermit passed his hand across his brow and eyes, and strained forward to gaze into the darkness.
Just then the moon cast a pale glimmer across the waves, and every line of the stranded boat stood darkling out against a background of white and stormy water.
The old man shuddered.
"Heaven be near to help us, boy," he cried, "but yonder is the Nugents' boat!"
CHAPTER III.
THE STORM.
Never would I dare to detract from the glory and honour that hangs, halo-like, around the memory of one of our nation's heroines—poor Grace Darling; but there are deeds done along the shores of this land of ours every winter, ay, and every summer too, that, although they shine not in story, are as bravely undertaken and as courageously carried out as that rescue at the Longstone lighthouse.
Though the hermit was white as to hair, though his beard flowed backwards now in the breeze like a silver stream as he stood in the glare of the hurricane-lamp, he was not an aged man. Every limb was straight, every muscle was strong, and his lowered brows nearly hid eyes that burned like living coals as he stood there on the cliff-top, pointing towards the doomed and stranded boat.
"Creggan, my lad," he cried, "we may not be able to save a single life, but our duty lies plain before us—we shall try!"