"In for your life, Joanna!" exclaimed the earl. She answered him not, but looked wildly around her. Nowhere could she see Wallace.
"Have I drowned him?" cried she, in a voice of frenzy, and striking the women from her, who would have held her back. "Let me clasp him, even in the deep waters!"
Happily, the earl lost the last sentence in the roaring of the storm.
"Wallace, Wallace!" cried she, wringing her hands, and still struggling with her women. At that moment a huge wave, sinking before her, discovered the object of her fears, straining along the surface of a rock, and followed by the men in the same laborious task, tugging forward the ropes to which the bark was attached. She gazed at them with wonder and affright, for, notwithstanding the beating of the elements (which seeming to find their breasts of iron and their feet armed with some preternatural adhesion to the cliff), they continued to bear resolutely onward. Fortunately, they did not now labor against the wind. Sometimes they pressed forward on the level edge of the rock; then a yawning chasm forced them to leap from cliff to cliff, or to spring on some more elevated projection. Thus, contending with the vortex and the storm, they at last arrived at the doubling of Cuthonrock,** the point that was to clear them of this minor Corie Vrekin. But at that crisis the rope which Wallace held broke, and, with the shock, he fell backward into the sea. The foremost man uttered a dreadful cry; but ere it could be echoed by his fellows, Wallace had risen above the waves, and, beating their whelming waters with his invincible arm, soon gained the vessel and jumped upon the deck. The point was doubled, but the next moment the vessel struck, and in a manner that left no hope of getting her off. All must take to the water or perish, for the second shock would scatter her piecemeal.
**Cuthon means the mournful sound of waves.
Again Lady Mar appeared. At sight of Wallace she forgot everything but him; and perhaps would have thrown herself into his arms, had not the anxious earl caught her in his own.
"Are we to die?" cried she to Wallace, in a voice of horror.
"I trust that God has decreed otherwise," was his reply. "Compose yourself; all may yet be well."
Lord Mar, from his yet unhealed wounds, could not swim; Wallace therefore tore up the benches of the rowers, and binding them into the form of a small raft, made it the vehicle for the earl and countess, with her two maids and the child. While the men were towing it, and buffeting with it through the breakers, he too threw himself into the sea to swim by its side, and be in readiness in case of accident.
Having gained the shore, or rather the broken rocks, that lie at the foot of the stupendous craigs which surround the Isle of Arran, Wallace and his sturdy assistants conveyed the countess and her terrified women up their acclivities. Fortunately for the shipwrecked voyagers, though the wind raged, its violence was of some advantage, for it nearly cleared the heavens of clouds, and allowed the moon to send forth her guiding light. By her lamp one of the men discovered the mouth of a cavern, where Wallace gladly sheltered his dripping charges.