They had returned very nearly to the spot where they had first reached the seashore, when they came to a little cottage at about the distance of a mile from the martello tower, and about twenty yards apart from another, which stood close to the cliff. There was nobody visible at the cottage-door, and a boat, which had lain high and dry as they had passed before, was now beginning to float with the tide, which was rolling rapidly in. The sea on that part of the coast, as I have often witnessed, goes out as gently and softly as a fine summer's day; but, even in the calmest weather, rushes in with great rapidity and force. There was no other boat near, though, from the appearance of the ground, and a spar or two which lay upon the beach, there appeared to have been a larger one somewhat higher up not long before, and it was natural to conclude that the fishermen, on that fine day, had put out to sea. Charles and Lucy drew up their horses not far from the boat to gaze once more over the sea; but at that moment Charles Tyrrell saw the little bark begin to slip down the sand as the water flowed round it, and it instantly struck him that by some accident it had become detached from whatever it had been moored to. "They'll lose their boat," he exclaimed, "if they do not mind what they are about;" and he turned his horse's head in order to tell the people at the cottage; but Mr. Driesen, who had remarked the same fact before him, and had turned for the same purpose, exclaimed, "I'll go, I'll go. You and Miss Effingham are picturesque and contemplative; an old fellow like I am can afford to have his reveries broken into." Thus saying, he rode up to the cottage first, but found nobody. He then rode on leisurely to the second, and called in at the door: "Good woman, are there no men about? You'll lose your boat to a certainty, for it's adrift there--afloat." A loud, shrill cry was the woman's only answer; and rushing out to the spot where Charles and Lucy stood, with an infant at her breast, she exclaimed, in a voice of agony, "Oh, the child, the child!" and at the same moment, though the boat had drifted out some way, the whole party could see a little pair of hands stretched over the gunwale of the boat, and part of the head and face of a child of about three or four years old. The woman uttered another loud scream when she saw it; but Charles Tyrrell was off his horse in a moment, and casting down his coat and waistcoat on the sand, he plunged at once into the sea.