"You young rascals!" exclaimed the Captain, shaking his stick at them. "I thought you were looking at me! I suppose you'll be going and telling everybody you saw the old sailor in a terrible funk, and that I was going to faint?" "Sure and that's what I feel like doing!" cried Mrs Gilmour in a very woebegone voice, she having only just succeeded in arriving at the scene of action, scrambling down with some difficulty from the top of the slope, the pathway being blocked at intervals by the struggling creepers which twined and interlaced themselves with the undergrowth, trailing down from the branches of the trees above, and making it puzzling to know which way to go. "I couldn't crawl a step further. What with scurrying to catch that dreadful steamboat, and then my fright of hearing the children scream, and now having to clamber down this mountain, I'm ready to drop!" "Don't, ma'am, please," said the Captain imploringly; "you'll be sorry for it if you do. The ground is full of rabbit-burrows, and there are a lot of nettles about." "Good gracious!" she exclaimed, looking round her in the greatest alarm, and drawing in the skirts of her dress. "Whatever made you bring me here then, Captain Dresser?" "Well, ma'am," began the Captain; but Mrs Gilmour, who at that moment first caught sight of Nellie's face, interrupted him before he could get in a word further than, "you see--" "Oh, my dearie!" cried she, in a higher key, forgetting at once all her own troubles; and, rushing up to Nell with the utmost solicitude, she hugged her first and then inspected her carefully, "what have you done to your poor dear face?" "Oh, it's not much, auntie," said Nellie, just then busy arranging her dress. "I have only got a scratch or two." "And your clothes too," continued Mrs Gilmour, her consternation increasing at the sight of the damage done. "Why, your frock is torn to shreds!" "Not so bad as that, auntie," laughed the girl, but with a look of dismay on her face the while. "It is rather bad though." "Bad," repeated her aunt, "sure, it's scandalous! And, say your brother, now--whatever have you both been about? His poor face is all bleeding, too!" "Now, don't you make matters worse than they are," interposed the Captain. "A little water will soon set them both right." "And where shall we get water here?" she asked. "Tell me that!" His answer came quick enough, the Captain being seldom "taken aback." "You forget, ma'am, the little rivulet we passed on our way. Dick," he added, "run and fetch some for us, like a good lad." Nell had brought with her from home a little tin bucket, which she usually took down to the shore for collecting sea-anemones and other specimens for her aquarium; so, catching hold of this, Dick started off in the direction of the tiny brook they had crossed some little time before, returning anon with the bucket brimming full.