When, after many failures, I managed to climb up the side of the boat and get astride of her keel, I began to feel sick with the sea water I had swallowed and weak after my long swim. Then my head grew dizzy, a mist came over my eyes, and I fainted away. Chapter XXI. The Rescue. When I returned to consciousness the warm sunlight was slanting down upon me. I opened my eyes and saw the snowy clouds floating in the blue sky. I thought I had but fallen asleep in the stern of the Curlew as she lay against the jetty on that Sabbath afternoon. I felt the boat rising and falling gently on the tide. All was quiet, except for the swishing of the water against the planks of the boat. I tried to speak: "Father," I said, thinking he was there on the jetty smoking. Then I felt a hand laid gently on my breast and a shadow crossed between me and the sun. "He is waking!" said a voice that sounded as sweet as the song of the skylark to my ears: "Halcro! Halcro!" A soft hand raised my head, and then I saw, looking down into my eyes, a beautiful face, framed in a mass of waving hair that the sunlight had turned into brightest gold. It was the face of Thora Kinlay. How Thora came to be there, leaning over me, I could not tell. My mind was in a strange confusion, and I remembered nothing of what I had gone through. But soon I heard another voice speaking to me. It was the voice of my sister Jessie. "Halcro! Halcro!" it murmured. "Where am I?" I asked; for I could not understand how I came to be lying in the bottom of a little sailing boat with my limbs all aching and trembling. And Jessie and Thora were at my side--Jessie steering, and Thora holding the rope of the little lug sail. How did it all come about? Then Jessie, bidding me lie still, told me in a few words how she and Thora had watched the race between the Curlew and the St. Magnus, standing on the high ground of the Ness point. They had seen the accident, and had immediately put out together in a little boat that was lying on the beach. They had rescued me from the upturned Curlew, where I lay in a faint, and were now making for the Lydia. "Have they saved father?" I asked. But the girls did not know. They had not seen anyone picked up by the St. Magnus. "Where is Carver's boat now?" I inquired; and feeling my strength return to me somewhat, I raised myself up and sat on the seat at the stern beside my sister, while Thora went forward to the mast to be in readiness to lower the sail. We were now, as I could see, only a few fathoms distant from the Lydia, which was lying athwart the stream, thus breaking the force of the current, and making it possible for us to draw up alongside. The St. Magnus was already there, having, as I afterwards found, given up the search for the unfortunate crew of the Curlew. Carver Kinlay was aboard on the quarterdeck engaged in an altercation with the skipper, who stood at the gangway.