He knew nothing of the offered reward, but he _did_ know that there were people who thought such things valuable and paid well for copies of them. If he escaped it might be worth something, and meanwhile it would divert his attention and keep him from losing his nerve. So, turning his back resolutely to the mad riot of circling waves, he set himself to trace the letters with the point of his knife upon a small metal match-box which he had in his pocket. It was a long task, but he completed it at last; and then he clambered to the top of the rock, hoping that the sight of his figure standing out against the sky might attract the notice of some passing fisherman. For a long time he watched and waited in vain, and he was just beginning to think that he would have to try and save himself by swimming, after all--for the hour of flood-tide was now drawing near and the violence of the whirlpool was beginning to abate--when, far in the distance, he suddenly descried a tiny white sail. No shout could be heard at such a distance; but the ready boy unwound the red sash from his waist and waved it over his head till his arm ached, and, after a pause of terrible anxiety, he at length saw the boat alter her course and stand right for him. The skill with which the two men who handled her kept clear of the fatal current by which Mads had been swept away, showed that both were practical seamen, and, as he boat neared him, the boy's keen eye recognized one of them as his own father. When the rescuers came near enough for a shout to be heard, the father called out to his son to climb down the crag again and stand ready to make a plunge when he gave the word, as the boat could not come too near, for fear of being dashed against the rock. Just around the foot of the rock itself there was always a strong eddy, which might suck down Mads even now, if he could not succeed in leaping clear of it. For ten minutes or more the two sailors kept "standing off and on," till the fury of the whirlpool should be completely spent, while the daring boy, perched on the lowest ledge of the rock, waited and watched for the signal. At length his father's powerful voice came rolling to him over the water: "Now!" Mingling with the shout came the splash of Mads' plunge into the water. Exerting all his strength, the active boy leaped far beyond the treacherous eddy that would have sucked him down among the sunken rocks, and in another moment he was safe in the boat, which turned and shot away from the perilous spot as lightly as the sea birds overhead. A few days later the young hero received the reward that he had so strangely won; and thus the would-be murderer, instead of destroying his victim, actually helped him to earn more money than he had ever made in his life. Nor did the villain go wholly unpunished, for the end of the cut rope having been found and suspicion directed toward him, he had to sneak away by night and never dared to show his face on that coast again.