With difficulty those who had gone down to seize the boat made their way after their companion, and she, before they could haul her up, was thrown on the beach and rolled over and over with her sides crushed in.
“Oh, the boat, the boat! what will poor father and those at home do?” exclaimed Michael, as he saw what had happened. “I thought to have saved her.”
“Never mind the boat,” answered a stout lad, one of those who had gone down to his rescue, wringing him by the hand. “We are right glad to have you safe. I only got here just in time to see you standing for the shore. I did not think you would reach it. I have been hunting for you all along the coast, and made sure that you were lost.”
“Thank you, Eban,” answered Michael, for it was Eban Cowan who spoke to him. “But poor father will grieve when he hears the boat is lost after all.”
“Thy father won’t grieve for that or anything else, Michael,” said Eban, thoughtlessly; “he is dead.”
“Dead!” exclaimed poor Michael, grasping the arm of the man who had brought him on shore, and who was still standing by him, and overcome by the strain on his nerves, which he had hitherto so manfully endured, and the sad news so abruptly given him, he would have fallen to the ground had not the fisherman supported him.
Mr Tremayne and his wife and daughter now came up.
“Poor boy, it is not surprising that he should give way at last,” observed Mrs Tremayne. “We will have him carried to our inn, where he can be properly attended to.”
Mr Tremayne agreed to her proposal, and, begging two of the stout fishermen to carry the lad, he promised a reward to those who could secure the boat and her gear.
“That will be my charge,” said the coast-guard officer. “But I am afraid that the boat herself is a complete wreck, and that very little of her gear will be saved.”