A flash--and the distant boom of a gun. 'I'm thinkin', sir, there's a ship out yon'er. It's a sair nicht to be on the water.' Presently another flash--and a rocket cleft its way aloft through the darkness, while the roar of the angry ocean, as they drew near, grew louder and louder. They now began to descend from the higher level, encountering on the downward course a repetition of the perils and difficulty which had hindered their ascent. Their attention was fully engrossed in picking their steps and left them no leisure to observe other things. At the bottom of the hill there was a considerable breadth of flooded meadow, and there a wooden bridge half submerged spanned the flooded waters of the Effick, shivering in the boiling flood, and threatening to give way beneath them as they hurried across. They now found themselves on the sea road, level and well made, and their troubles or at least the dangers of the way were at an end. And now for the first time they could realize the horror of the raging sea, with the great billows hurling themselves against the shore, and casting their sheets of foam high in the air, and drenching the road in showers of spray. Again they see the flash of a minute gun, but its voice is drowned in the tumult of the elements. The flash now, not as before, far out at sea--the ship was coming perilously near the shore. 'I'm fear'd they'll hae sair wark to win round Inverlyon pint, noo,' said Sandie; 'they're ower far in shore!'--'The Lord pity them!' he went on, as another flash showed the vessel to be still nearing the land. 'They're driftin' fair in for the Effick Mouth! The Lord hae mercy on their souls!' 'How is the tide to-night, Sandie?' the minister enquired. 'Do you think we can cross the mouth of the bay by the sands under the rocks? It will be wet, of course, with the spray from the waves, but we are too wet ourselves to mind that, and it saves full four miles of the way.' 'Na, sir! The sea's in the nicht, an' there's five feet o' water on the sands. We maun gang round.'