Mrs Castleton shrieked out with terror, supposing that Harry was in the boat.
Algernon, who was not destitute of courage, rode his horse into the surf and succeeded in dragging out a man who was on the point of being carried off. Again he went in and saved another in the same way, looking anxiously round for Harry. He was nowhere to be seen, and to his relief he found that the Nancy was one of the sternmost boats. Two poor fellows in the boat were carried away, notwithstanding all the efforts made to secure them. Much of the boat’s gear was lost, and she herself was greatly damaged.
“Which is the Nancy?” inquired Algernon, round whom several people were collected, eager to thank him for the courage he had just displayed.
She was pointed out to him. On she came under a close-reefed sail.
Adam, probably suspecting that something was wrong by having seen the boat haul up to get off the shore, was on the look-out for signals.
The second boat came on shore, narrowly escaping the fate of the first. Still the Nancy was to come. She was seen labouring on amid the foaming seas. Now she sank into the trough of a huge wave, which rose up astern and robed in with foam-covered crest, curling over as if about to overwhelm her. Another blast filled her sails, and just escaping the huge billow which came roaring astern, the next moment, surrounded by a mass of hissing waters, she was carried high up on the beach. Most of her active crew instantly leaped out, and joined by their friends on shore, began hauling her up the beach, when another sea rolling in nearly carried them off their legs. Harry, however, who had remained in the stern of the boat with Halliburt, leaped on shore at the moment the waters receded and escaped with a slight wetting.
As they made their way up the beach, a fair-haired, blue-eyed little girl ran out from among the crowd and threw herself, regardless of Adam’s dripping garments, into his arms.
“Maidy May so glad you safe,” she exclaimed, as the fisherman bestowed a kiss on her brow. “We afraid the cruel sea take you away.”
“There was no great danger of that, my little maiden,” answered Adam, putting her down. She then ran towards Jacob and bestowed the same affectionate greeting on him. Holding his hands, she tried to draw him away from the surf, as if afraid that, disappointed of its prey, it might still carry him off.
Harry remarked the reception the fisherman and his son met with from the interesting-looking child, and he never forgot those bright blue eyes and the animated expression of that lovely countenance.