But, help was at hand.
Just as the Captain called out, a couple of coastguardsmen were coming round the corner of the castle on their beat towards the east pier; and, hearing his shout to Rover, they stopped.
“Hullo!” cried one of the men, observing that Mrs Gilmour was in a state of great agitation, with Nellie sobbing beside her and the Captain at the bottom of the sloping rampart in the act of taking off his coat—“Anything wrong, mum?”
Mrs Gilmour’s heart was so full that she could not speak at once, and the man who addressed her jumped to a wrong conclusion from the absence of any explanation at the moment.
“Oh, I see, mum, he’s a-going to commit sooacide? We’ll soon spoil his little game, mum. Bear a hand, Bill, will ye?”
So saying, the speaker and his comrade, with a catlike ease that came naturally to them from their practice at sea, where they had a rolling deck beneath their feet much more difficult to traverse than the slippery slope they were now on, had reached the spot where the coatless old sailor stood almost as these words were uttered, leaping down the steep descent in a sort of ‘hop-skip-and-jump’ fashion.
“None o’ that!” exclaimed the elder of the two men who had previously spoken, grasping hold of one of the Captain’s arms while his mate, or ‘Bill,’ caught hold of the other. “A-going to make away with yourself, eh? Not if we knows it, sir!”
At the same instant, however, Captain Dresser turned round with a face on which the animated expression produced by his determination to try and rescue the boys was mingled with a puzzled look of astonishment at being tackled in this unceremonious manner when on the very point of action.
His black eyes twinkled and his bushy eyebrows moved up and down at a fine rate as he looked up indignantly to see who had dared to lay hand on him.
“My stars!” ejaculated the coastguardsman Bill, dropping hold of the Captain’s arm as if it had been a hot poker, “I’m blest if it ain’t the old cap’en!”