I unshipped
the oars, and sprung out just as the coble came crash alongside the
bank, then swirling round, her head flew out to the stream, dragging
Donald along the grass after her. I jumped into the water, and caught
hold of the bow; for two minutes the struggle was doubtful and she
continued to drag us along: at last Donald reached the stump of a tree,
and, running round it, made a turn of the chain and brought her up.

We sat down, and wiped our faces, and looked at each other in silence.
The incredibly short space of time which had elapsed since we stood on
the '_other side_,' with the mysterious future before us, and now to be
sitting on '_this_,' and call it the _past_, was like a dream. The
tumult, the flying shoot, the concussion at parting and arriving, seemed
like an explosion, as if we had been blown up and thrown over. 'I don't
think that boat will ever go back again, Thighearna,' said Donald. 'Why
not?' 'Did you not feel her twist, and hear her split, when we came into
the burst of the stream?' replied Donald. 'I don't know,' said I; 'I
felt and heard a great many things, but there was no time to think what
they were.' 'Oh, it was not _thinking_ that I was,' answered Donald;
'but the water came squirting up in my face through her ribs, and I held
on by both bows, expecting at every stroke to see them open and let me
through.' We got up and examined the boat's bottom; there was a yawning
rent from the stem to the centre, and part of the torn planks lapped one
over the other by the twist, the bows being only held together by the
iron band which bound the gunwale.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] The woodcocks' brae, from the frequency with which they breed there.

_THE STORY OF GRACE DARLING_

A CAREFUL reader of the 'Times' on the morning of Tuesday, September 11,
1838, might have found, if he cared to look, a certain paragraph in an
obscure corner headed 'The Wreck of the "Forfarshire."' It is printed in
the small type of that period; the story is four days old, for in those
days news was not flashed from one end of the country to the other; and,
moreover, the story is very incomplete.

On the evening of Wednesday, September 5, the steamship 'Forfarshire'
left Hull for Dundee, carrying a cargo of iron, and having some forty
passengers on board. The ship was only eight years old; the master, John
Humble, was an experienced seaman; and the crew, including firemen and
engineers, was complete. But even before the