It was the voice of a woman, but the accents were not so deeply burdened with terror as the words would seem to indicate. Mr. Buckstone glanced in the direction from which the appeal came, and discovered a small boat, containing a female. She uttered no wild screams, she made no extravagant gestures; and as her tones, gentle and supplicatory as they were, had before informed him, she did not appear to be seriously alarmed. The strong tide was bearing the boat swiftly through the narrow strait between the Great Bell and the north shore. Although the lady, standing up in the boat, did not seem to regard her situation as a perilous one, the artist took a very different view of it. The wind was blowing fresh from the south-west, and the frail craft, already tossed by the great waves that rolled up from beyond the Point, was going out to sea. The wind and the tide might force it miles from the shore, and the lady, if not drowned, would be subjected to a long absence and a great deal of suffering. She appealed to him for help, or, if not to him, to somebody, for it was doubtful whether she had yet seen him. If there was no danger, of course she would not ask for assistance. Mr. Eliot Buckstone was an artist, and his imagination was strong and vivid. To him the lady’s situation at once became desperate. Without his prompt decision, and his strong arm, the interesting supplicant would be swallowed up by the remorseless billows, ingulfed by the relentless tide, mangled upon the pitiless rocks. Mr. Buckstone threw off his coat the very instant he discovered the helpless lady, for though all the matters we have mentioned were duly considered, the thoughts flashed through his mind as thoughts always should flash through the brain of a genius. Mr. Buckstone threw off his vest. He did not take off either of these garments, for he was an impetuous young man, and a lady was in mortal peril--he threw them off. Mr. Buckstone kicked off his boots, though they were of patent leather, and snugly encased a pair of well-formed feet; he did not pull them off by any of the slow and tedious expedients known to the wearers of artistic boots--he kicked them off. “Help! help!” again appealed the lone voyager, this time with a little more emphasis, but hardly with more feeling or more terror. Mr. Buckstone rushed down to the water, walked out upon a big flat rock, and launched himself upon the stormy tide. The boat was coming within a few rods of the Point, and having measured with his eye the base and perpendicular of a triangle, the hypothenuse of which was the space between himself and the boat, he struck out on the base line, leaving the wayward craft to follow the perpendicular.