Just around the foot of the rock itself there was always a strong eddy, which might suck down Mads even now, if he could not succeed in leaping clear of it.
For ten minutes or more the two sailors kept "standing off and on," till the fury of the whirlpool should be completely spent, while the daring boy, perched on the lowest ledge of the rock, waited and watched for the signal.
At length his father's powerful voice came rolling to him over the water:
"Now!"
Mingling with the shout came the splash of Mads' plunge into the water. Exerting all his strength, the active boy leaped far beyond the treacherous eddy that would have sucked him down among the sunken rocks, and in another moment he was safe in the boat, which turned and shot away from the perilous spot as lightly as the sea birds overhead.
A few days later the young hero received the reward that he had so strangely won; and thus the would-be murderer, instead of destroying his victim, actually helped him to earn more money than he had ever made in his life. Nor did the villain go wholly unpunished, for the end of the cut rope having been found and suspicion directed toward him, he had to sneak away by night and never dared to show his face on that coast again.