yes looking
far over that howling waste of sea; Duncan, his younger brother, had his
gaze fixed mostly on the brown breadth of the sail, hammered at by the
gusts of wind; while as for the boy at the bow, that enterprising youth
had got a rope's end, and was endeavoring to strike at the crest of each
huge wave as it came ploughing along in its resistless strength.

But at one moment the boat gave a heavier lurch than usual, and the
succeeding wave struck her badly. In the great rush of water that then
ran by her side, Macleod's startled eye seemed to catch a glimpse of
something red, something blazing and burning red in the waste of green,
and almost the same glance showed him there was no boy at the bow!
Instantly, with just one cry to arrest the attention of the men, he had
slipped over the side of the boat just as an otter slips off a rock. The
two men were bewildered but for a second. One sprang to the halyards,
and down came the great lugsail; the other got out one of the great
oars, and the mighty blade of it fell into the bulk of the next wave as
if he would with one sweep tear her head round. Like two mad men the men
pulled; and the wind was with them, and the tide also, but,
nevertheless, when they caught sight, just for a moment, of some object
behind them, that was a terrible way away. Yet there was no time, they
thought, or seemed to think, to hoist the sail again, and the small
dingy attached to the boat would have been swamped in a second; and so
there was nothing for it but the deadly struggle with those immense
blades against the heavy resisting mass of the boat. John Cameron looked
round again; then, with an oath, he pulled his oar across the boat.

"Up with the sail, lad!" he shouted; and again he sprang to the
halyards.

The seconds, few as they were, that were necessary to this operation
seemed ages; but no sooner had the wind got a purchase on the breadth of
the sail, than the boat flew through the water, for she was new running
free.

"He has got him! I can see the two!" shouted the elder Cameron.

And as for the younger? At this mad speed the boat would be close to
Macleod in another second or two; but in that brief space of time the
younger Cameron had flung his clothes off, and stood there stark-naked
in the cutting March wind.

"That is foolishness!" his brother cried in the Gaelic. "You will have
to take an oar!"

"I will not take an oar!" the other cried, with both hands ready to let