He was so certain of this that he would have told them then and there what he had found on the beach, but for the awkwardness of explaining why he had previously concealed it. And, after all, he reflected, the castaway—if such indeed he was—might not be the loser of the watch. Without producing that evidence, he soon convinced his companions that there had been some sort of disaster off the coast, and that the movements they saw on the “Old Cow’s” back were signals of distress. “He has a board or something in his hand, and he is beckoning with it!” cried Perce. “He wouldn’t be waving it that way if he wasn’t in trouble!” “I don’t see what _we_ can do,” said Moke. “He can’t be in any great danger,” added Poke. “But he may have been there all night; we don’t know what condition he is in!” Perce replied. “We can give the alarm, and, may be, go for him ourselves, if nobody else will.” The twins didn’t see how they could afford to leave their work. There was another cart already at the other end of the beach, and more kelp-gatherers would probably be coming soon. They didn’t fancy the idea of giving up the advantage gained by spending the night on the shore and beginning work in the morning before anybody else arrived. But, though Perce could do a rather underhand thing in keeping the watch from them, he wasn’t a boy to let that or any other selfish consideration prevent him from attempting the rescue of a person in distress. “Besides,” he said, “it may be somebody we know. Don’t you remember when that man was seen clinging to the rigging of the wreck off Rocky Shoals, Tom Bowers was one of the men that volunteered to launch a boat and try to take him off. Tom’s mother said all she could to prevent him, for there was a tremendous sea running, but he went; and the man turned out to be his own father—her own husband! and the only one saved from the wreck.” The twins remarked that it wasn’t any father of theirs on the “Old Cow’s” back, at that time in the morning, very sure! And they were reluctant to have their rich harvest of seaweed interrupted. Yet they thought something ought to be done. “Call out and tell old Homans,” they said. “Old Homans” was the man who had come on at the other end of the beach with his cart. But Perce didn’t see what he could do. “He might do what we do; then he won’t be getting seaweed while we’re off,” said the twins. “Well, you can tell him while I run up to the boarding-house,” cried Perce. “Here’s a boat; I’ll get oars, and, maybe, some men to help.” Old Homans didn’t take much interest in the report the twins brought him of a human being on the lonely outlying ledge. “Big ninny! He’s no business to be there!” he exclaimed. He spent but little time in trying to concentrate his imperfect eyesight upon the figure they described.