At last a fisherman suggested that the beach should be searched. Mr Moreton at once set out with a party quickly assembled to perform the anxious task, dreading to find the mangled body of his son and his brave young friend. No signs of them could be found. Still his anxiety was in no respect lessened.
He stopped on his way back at one cottage which he had not before visited. He found the inmate, an old woman, in deep affliction. Her husband, old Jonathan Jefferies, a fisherman, when out on his calling, had perished during the gale in the night. He could sympathise with her, and as far as money help was concerned, he promised all in his power. With an almost broken heart he returned home to give the sad news to his wife and family.
Poor Mrs Merryweather, she was even still more to be pitied. To have her son restored to her, and then to find him snatched away again so suddenly, perhaps for ever!
Day after day passed by, and no news came of the much-loved missing ones.
Chapter Two.
On the Rocks—A Brave Lad—Saved—Tristram’s Fate—Still in a Boat.
“David, you must try to swim on shore, and save yourself,” exclaimed Harry Merryweather, looking at the foaming seas, which now began, with a deafening noise, to dash furiously round the rock on which he and his friend stood. “If you don’t go soon, you will not be able to get there at all. Leave me, I beg you. There is no reason why both should be lost.”
“No indeed, that I will not,” answered David, stoutly. “If I thought that I could get help by trying to swim on shore I would go, but I do not think there is a place near where I could find a boat.”