“Sure, nobody could have been so stupid!” cried Mrs Gilmour laughing. “What, cut off the poor thing’s head in order to extricate it?”
“Sure an’ they did, ma’am,” said he, mimicking her; “and, I’m sorry to say, our friend the skipper is one of the same kidney!”
While the two were thus talking, Bob and Nell remained down on the beach, awaiting the arrival of Dick and Hellyer, who through want of room in their wherry had to come ashore in another boat.
Rover, such was his strict sense of duty, strange to say, instead of accompanying his young master and mistress, was still intent on keeping in sight of the hamper.
Accordingly, he stopped on board the steamer till Hellyer, the hamper’s custodian, left her; when after seeing him and Dick embarked along with the hamper, the retriever jumped over the side of the stranded vessel and swam ashore in company with the boat containing his friends, apparently mistrusting the frail craft, and preferring to rely upon his own powers in the water.
Nor was he far behind, getting to land almost at the same moment that the wherry’s keel grated on the beach; when, after shaking himself decorously as he had been taught, so as to avoid wetting his friends by his excessive moisture, Rover barked and pranced round Hellyer and the hamper, and then round Bob and Nellie, as if to say in his dog language— “There, my dear young master and mistress, I have discharged my trust faithfully,” scurrying off then to the higher part of the shore, where Mrs Gilmour and the Captain were standing, to tell them the same tale, with a loud “Bow wow!”
“Come now,” cried Mrs Gilmour, on the little party being reunited again, “we must be off home at once; for, it is getting late, and Sarah will be wondering where we all are.”
“Well, we mustn’t keep ‘the good Sarah’ waiting,” said the Captain slily, with a wink to Nellie that set her off laughing so that she dropped the bunch of wild-flowers which her aunt was just handing her at the moment, and was obliged to stop to pick them up. “By Jove! though, ma’am, she may have forgotten us as she did the other things.”
“You’re too bad entirely!” exclaimed Mrs Gilmour a little pettishly. “I suppose I shall never hear the last about that, nor poor Sarah either. Come on now, dearie; we must hasten home whether or no.”
So saying, she made the Captain wheel round from taking a last lingering look at the Bembridge Belle, whose skipper, now that she was a bit lightened aft by all the people having cleared out of her, had backed again into deep water; and then putting on full steam ahead, was trying to run her up high and dry ashore.