He remembered to have heard that just at full flood tide the whirlpool was not dangerous, and he determined to watch for the subsiding of its fury and then plunge in and take his chance of being able to swim ashore or to fall in with a boat.
But what should he do to fill up the long hours that lay between? He felt that the dizzy dance of the whirling waters around him, and their ceaseless roar, were already beginning to unstring his nerves and make his brain reel; and he knew that if he could not find some way to counteract their paralyzing influence, he must soon become helpless and fall headlong into the abyss.
Just then his eye caught the antique letters cut in the rock above him, which no living soul but himself had ever seen so near, and the sight of them gave him an idea.
He knew nothing of the offered reward, but he did know that there were people who thought such things valuable and paid well for copies of them. If he escaped it might be worth something, and meanwhile it would divert his attention and keep him from losing his nerve.
So, turning his back resolutely to the mad riot of circling waves, he set himself to trace the letters with the point of his knife upon a small metal match-box which he had in his pocket.
It was a long task, but he completed it at last; and then he clambered to the top of the rock, hoping that the sight of his figure standing out against the sky might attract the notice of some passing fisherman.
For a long time he watched and waited in vain, and he was just beginning to think that he would have to try and save himself by swimming, after all—for the hour of flood-tide was now drawing near and the violence of the whirlpool was beginning to abate—when, far in the distance, he suddenly descried a tiny white sail.
No shout could be heard at such a distance; but the ready boy unwound the red sash from his waist and waved it over his head till his arm ached, and, after a pause of terrible anxiety, he at length saw the boat alter her course and stand right for him.
The skill with which the two men who handled her kept clear of the fatal current by which Mads had been swept away, showed that both were practical seamen, and, as he boat neared him, the boy's keen eye recognized one of them as his own father.
When the rescuers came near enough for a shout to be heard, the father called out to his son to climb down the crag again and stand ready to make a plunge when he gave the word, as the boat could not come too near, for fear of being dashed against the rock.