Not the least difficult part of the business now was the raising of the half-drowned pair--the rescuer and the rescued inextricably locked together--out of the water and on to the safe shelter of the rocks above. Jim was by this time as insensible as the boy he had risked his life to draw ashore, though Nat was confident that he still lived, as he had not been long enough in the water to be past restoring. But his bear-like embrace of the child was hard to undo; and only when the pair lay side by side upon the rocks did Nat's strong hands succeed in loosing that rigid clasp. The moment the child was free, Eileen took the dripping form in her arms and bore it indoors. She scarcely dared to hope that the little fellow could be living. There was no means of knowing how long he had been in the water, but it must have been a long while. However, she laid him on her table, with a small cushion beneath his head, dried and chafed his cold limbs, and applied a steady and gentle friction in the neighbourhood of the heart. Presently she was almost certain she detected a faint pulsation, and redoubled her efforts, disregarding Pat's entreaties that she would bring the little boy to the fire because he must be so cold. [Illustration: "He seemed to have received no injury at all, and began to swallow the warm milk."--_Page 120._] "Wait a bit, honey," she answered, still rubbing vigorously, and working the little arms up and down in a way which perplexed Pat not a little. "We must get the little heart to work before we warm the little body, else the blood will run there and choke it, and it won't be able to beat again. Set the heart going first, and then we'll wrap him in blankets by the fire. That's what I have always been taught. And put the kettle right on the fire, sonny, and get the bath out ready. I do believe--praise the Lord!--that the darling is living still. If he is, and if he gets a bit better, a hot bath will restore him quicker than anything. And get that box of dried herbs and sea-weed from the cupboard. There are some rare good things there for rubbing the skin with. I've seen wonderful cures with them in my young days." Pat was intensely excited as he watched his mother's quick and clever ministrations to the little boy, who already began to look different--less like a child of marble, and more like one of flesh and blood. It seemed very, very long to Pat before his mother looked up with kindling eyes to say he was still alive; but Eileen herself had been surprised at the quickness with which the little heart had begun to beat beneath her hands, and decided in her own mind that the child could not have been very long in the water before they saw him.