"Are you Sidney Harlow?"
"Hold hard, matey!" Captain Eph said, shaking the rope as if to attract the rescued man's attention. "I don't allow that it's the proper time, while you're strung up here on the end of a line, to do very much tongue-waggin', leastways, if it is, I'd rather somebody else held turn. Shin in, an' be quick about it, for we can't afford to let the only sound keeper we've got on this 'ere light freeze to death on your account."
The stranger clambered over the window-sill, unfastened the rope from his body, and flung the free end down to Mr. Peters, after which he took Sidney's face in both his hands, as he asked again:
"Are you Sidney Harlow?"
"Of course I am; but you can't be Mr. Sawyer?"
"Why not, lad?"
"Because he was drowned. I saw him sink!"
"Ay, lad, but he came up within reach of the wreckage we went out to look at. Again and again I yelled while you were cruising around expecting to see me come to the surface near where I had disappeared; but you didn't hear me, and then the fog shut down again. I gave myself up for lost; but within an hour two fishermen in a dory blundered along, and took me to their vessel three or four miles away. There was no such thing as finding the West Wind while the sea was covered with fog so thick that it could almost be cut with a knife, and I've served an apprenticeship as fisherman, eating my heart out because the skipper wouldn't put into port until he had a full fare."
Then Mr. Sawyer, one-time mate of the schooner West Wind, lifted Sidney in his arms as if he had been a baby, and covered his face with kisses, while Captain Eph and Uncle Zenas, regardless of the shivering first assistant on the rocks below, stared at the two in open-mouthed astonishment.
"Do you mean to tell me you're the sailorman who fell out of the motor boat, leavin' Sonny alone?" the old keeper cried as soon as the stranger had ceased caressing the lad.