. Instantly he felt his arm convulsively grasped, and the next
moment he was seized round the neck in a gripe so violent that it almost
choked him. He sank at once, and the instinct of self-preservation
restored his presence of mind. With a powerful effort he tore Ailie
from her grasp, and quickly raised himself to the surface, where he swam
gently with his left hand, and held the struggling child at arm's-length
with his right.

The joy caused by the knowledge that she had still life to struggle
infused new energy into Glynn's well-nigh exhausted frame, and he
assumed as calm and cheerful a tone as was possible under the
circumstances when he exclaimed--"Ailie, Ailie, don't struggle, dear,
I'll save you _if you keep quiet_."

Ailie was quiet in a moment. She felt in the terror of her young heart
an almost irresistible desire to clutch at Glynn's neck; but the
well-known voice reassured her, and her natural tendency to place blind,
implicit confidence in others, served her in this hour of need, for she
obeyed his injunctions at once.

"Now, dear," said Glynn, with nervous rapidity, "don't grasp me, else we
shall sink. Trust me. _I'll never let you go_. Will you trust me?"

Ailie gazed wildly at her deliverer through her wet and tangled tresses,
and with great difficulty gasped the word "Yes," while she clenched the
garments on her labouring bosom with her little hands, as if to show her
determination to do as she was bid.

Glynn at once drew her towards him and rested her head on his shoulder.
The child gave vent to a deep, broken sigh of relief, and threw her
right arm round his neck, but the single word "Ailie," uttered in a
remonstrative tone, caused her to draw it quickly back and again grasp
her breast.

All this time Glynn had been supporting himself by that process
well-known to swimmers as "treading water," and had been so intent upon
his purpose of securing the child, that he failed to observe the light
of a lantern gleaming in the far distance on the sea, as the boat went
ploughing hither and thither, the men almost breaking the oars in their
desperate haste, and the captain standing in the stern-sheets, pale as
death, holding the light high over his head, and gazing with a look of
unutterable agony into the surrounding gloom.

Glynn now saw the distant light, and exerting his voice to the utmost,
gave vent to a prolonged cry. Ailie looked up in her companion's face
while he listened intently.