“Look! look there!” shouted her brother with a wild expression, as he pointed to a part of the rocky shore where a vessel was dimly seen through the drift.
“She’s trying to weather the point,” exclaimed Brooke, clearing the moisture from his eyes, and endeavouring to look steadily.
“She’ll never weather it. See! the fishermen are following her along-shore,” cried young Leather, dropping his sister’s arm, and bounding away.
“Oh! don’t leave me behind, Shank,” pleaded May.
Shank was beyond recall, but our hero, who had also sprung forward, heard the pleading voice and turned back.
“Here, hook on to me,” he cried quickly, for he was in no humour to delay.
The girl grasped his arm at once, and, to say truth, she was not much of a hindrance, for, although somewhat inelegant, as we have said, she was lithe as a lizard and fleet as a young colt.
A few minutes brought them to the level shore where Brooke left May to shelter herself with some fisher-women behind a low wall, while he ran along to a spot where a crowd of fishermen and old salts, enveloped in oil-skins, were discussing the situation as they leaned against the shrieking wind.
“Will she weather it, Grinder, think you?” he asked of an elderly man, whose rugged features resembled mahogany, the result of having bid defiance to wind and weather for nigh half a century.
“She may, Mr Brooke, an’ she mayn’t,” answered the matter-of-fact man of the sea, in the gruff monotone with which he would have summoned all hands to close reef in a hurricane. “If her tackle holds she’ll do it. If it don’t she won’t.”