"Oh, Grace, if your father is lost, I'll blame you for this morning's work."
Says one who told the story:
"In estimating the dangers which heroic adventurers encounter, one circumstance ought not to be forgotten. Had it been at ebb tide the boat could not have passed between the islands; and Darling and his daughter knew that the tide would be flowing on their return, when their united strength would have been utterly insufficient to pull the boat back to the lighthouse island. Had they not got aid of the survivors in rowing back again, they themselves would have been compelled to remain on the rock beside the wreck until the tide ebbed again."
The frail boat passed over the stormy waters and neared the rock.
It could only have been by the exertion of muscular power as well as determined courage that the father and daughter carried the boat to the rock. And when there a danger, greater even than that which they had encountered in approaching it, arose from the difficulty of steadying the boat and preventing its being destroyed on those sharp ridges by the ever-restless chafing and heaving of the billows.
The father and daughter could see the eager faces turned toward them, and the sight redoubled their efforts in reaching the rock, and in the task of disembarking and drawing the boat up the rock and out of reach of the waves. It was a perilous landing-place. But when the craft was secured the father and Grace approached the half-dead group.
All were safe except the two children. Their mother was seemingly dead, also, and lay clasping the bodies in her arms. But care and attention revived her. A fireman who had lain for three hours on the rock where he had been tossed, had clung to a strong nail spiked in the rock, and though lashed and beaten by the waves, and tortured by bleeding hands, he had not let go.
The rescuers placed the survivors one by one in the boat. But the return journey was even more perilous than that which took them to the wreck, although the sailors aided at the oars. Longstone, however, was at last reached and the sufferers housed in the lighthouse.
They were in safety, but the violence of the sea forbade any attempt to reach the mainland. There were good accommodations at the light. The tower was ingeniously built, and besides a well-furnished sitting-room, in which was a capital collection of books, had three or four comfortable bedrooms. In addition there was an abundance of wholesome, homely fare.
The poor woman who had lost her children was suffering intensely, and to her Grace gave up her bed, sleeping upon a table. A boat's crew from Northumberland, which after some hours came in search of the Forfarshire, also had to claim the hospitality of the lighthouse, and for three days were held by the raging seas. Finally, the passage to the mainland was undertaken in safety, and the news reached the keeper's family that the boat first launched had been picked up and its nine passengers rescued. Of the sixty-three who had sailed from Hull five days before, nineteen were alive.