"Seemed like he answered me something, I couldn't make out what; but he laid hold on my sleeve with that thin white hand of his, that gripped like a vice, as if he'd pull me out into the storm with him, instead of coming in to me. And by his face I could see there was a storm within him as stirred him more than the one without; and then he pointed down seawards, and, thinks I, 'tis a ship he's seen or heard on the Devil's Ribs. And though I knew well we could no more help any poor wrecked souls than if they was in the moon, yet it wasn't in me to back out of going with him to see what there was to see. So just laying hold of my tarpaulin and a flask of rum, off we starts on the run, dead in the wind's eye. How he managed for to scud over the ground at that rate is more than I could make out; the wind seemed to take no hold on him, but just let him through easy, though all the time it was near blowing my ears off. "Well, down we came to the beach at last, at a place about a cable's length this side of the point. I'd kept my man in sight up to this time by reason of the white shirt he had on, his coat, as I told ye, being off him, but whither gone I'd not remembered for to ask him. But now, all of a sudden, I found he'd disappeared, and all I could see was the pale froth of the surf that came leaping up the beach, with a sound from the black wave behind it like the going off of a big gun. Howsoever, I presently stumbled round the corner of a big boulder--ye may see it yonder, sir, in a line with the face of the lighthouse and the top of the pine stump--and there he was on his knees beside something wrapped up and still; and when I looked, 'twas seemingly a young girl, about twelve to thirteen years old, with no life in her. She had come ashore on a bit of planking, and the Scholar he had seen her coming, and had scrambled down from the cliff in time to haul her in and under the lea of the boulder. How he did it the Lord only knows, for ten men working together might have failed in it. But there she lay, with no mark of harm or bruise upon her, and yet (as my heart misgave me) lifeless from the washing of the waves through which she had voyaged to land.