Luckily the ship was a merchant vessel and carried very few passengers, so that the life-savers were confident of saving all those on board. Also the wind was beginning to abate and the sea was becoming less angry--all of which helped them in their work. The two girls were standing side by side, eagerly watching the progress of the second boat, when they were startled by a hail from behind and turned to find Grace and Amy flying down toward them. "Mollie!" Amy gasped, trying to catch her breath while her cheeks flamed with excitement, "we just heard something we thought you ought to know. You know the woman with the little boy," she hurried on as Mollie was about to speak, "well, while she was comforting her own child, she happened to speak of two other children on board--" "Who cry a great deal," Grace put in eagerly. "They are in charge of a man who looks like a Spaniard, and they seem to be in mortal terror of him--" "Girls," the word burst through dry lips as Mollie took a step toward them, "what are you telling me? Oh, I can't bear to hope if--" she grasped Grace's arm and shook it, not realizing how she hurt. "Tell me," she cried, "are they boy and girl--" "Yes," Grace answered trembling. "I don't know, Mollie, dear, of course, but from her description, those two children sounded an awful lot like the twins!" Mollie waited to hear no more, but was off like a whirlwind down the beach toward the second boat that was just coming in to shore. And while she ran she was praying with all her fervent young heart. "Oh, Lord, give me back those babies!" she cried sobbingly. "If you only will I'll never, never, _never_ ask you for anything again as long as I live." Then she saw them! A big, vicious looking man with black hair and black bushy eyebrows was lifting Dodo--her little Dodo--out of the boat. And while she looked, her heart beating wildly, hardly able to believe the evidence of her eyes, the man stretched out his hand for the boy, who sat crouched in the back of the boat. Then followed something that made Mollie cry out in rage. Because the boy hung back in evident terror, the man struck him across the face, and, seizing his hand, jerked him roughly out of the boat. "Dodo! Paul!" screamed Mollie, racing down toward them, unmindful of wet feet and sodden clothing. "Babies, it's Mollie! Your own Mollie who--" But her voice was drowned in a shriek from the twins as they tore themselves loose from the man and flung themselves upon her. She dropped to her knees in the sand and strained them to her, laughing, crying, sobbing out endearments while they clung to her frantically, burying their faces in her neck. "Don't let wicked man get Dodo!" sobbed the little girl. "He's bad man! He hurt Dodo." With a cry Mollie jumped to her feet, an arm about each of the twins, and looked about for the man. The passengers who had also come ashore in the boat stood looking on in bewilderment. But the Spaniard had disappeared.