The hook was brought, and at the second throw caught over the iron balcony under Dame Dutton's window.
The Inspector climbed the rope, followed by the others, and soon admission was gained to the room beneath.
"Here's one of the Seven Sleepers," said Dick Trail, going up to the couch. He started back. "Why, it's the Cap'n's mother, and she looks as if she were dying."
Two of the men gathered closer to see what they could do for the poor woman, and the others began to search the tower. No clew to the mystery, if mystery it contained, was found below. Together in silence they mounted the winding stairway.
A flood of mellow light poured upon the group as the officer opened the door into the lantern-room. There upon the floor, bathed in the glory, lay Huldah Deane. To her locked senses, lulled into unconsciousness by the roar of the storm-lashed ocean, the tumult in the tower had never reached.
She was only awakened now by feeling herself lifted in a pair of strong arms, and strained to the breast of the stranger seaman.
"Huldah! Huldah! My little one! my daughter!" she heard a tender voice murmuring, and in her glimmer of consciousness felt hot tears dropping on her face.
After the first wild emotion of joy, what a sense of rest the child had, feeling the protecting arms of her father about her! For the stranger, who had endured shipwreck and danger, was none other than Huldah's father.
With only the name of Kyle Dutton, who had taken Huldah from the orphanage where he had placed her before sailing on his last fated voyage, to furnish him a clew, Captain Deane, after a vain search of months, had been guided into the presence of his child by the beacon her little hands had lighted.
There were honest tears in the eyes looking upon this reunion; neither did one of those strong hearts fail to respond with a thrill of admiration as the daughter recounted to her father the trials to which her fortitude and courage had been subjected during the past night of tempest and awful solitude.