From watching the St. Magnus I turned my attention to the approaching barque, which, by her green-painted hull, I soon enough recognized as the Lydia.  She was struggling slowly onward against the rapids of Hoy Sound, with the wind on her starboard quarter, and as we got nearer her I could see the extent of the damage she had sustained in the late storm.  She had lost her fore and main topgallant masts, and her port bulwarks were stove in.  The quarter boat was missing and her jolly boat was gone.

She came along at the rate of about two knots, under close-reefed topsails, storm trysails, and spanker.  We could hear Captain Gordon’s voice directing the working of the ship, and once I saw him on the quarterdeck, leaning over the rail to watch us.  His head was bandaged as if from some accident.  On the forecastle deck the mate and some men stood watching our approach, with ropes ready to throw out to us.

I became inwardly excited when the moment came that was to determine everything; and even my father was a little pale as he steered us steadily towards the lee side of the Lydia.  We came within a hundred yards of her when he cried out, “Lower away!” and I heard the same order given on the St. Magnus.

Down came our sail in quick obedience, and at the same time oars were put out to prevent the strong stream and the way we had on us from sweeping us past the vessel.

The Lydia was now in a most dangerous part of the channel, where the rapid tide was met by the equally rapid stream of Burra Sound from the south side of Graemsay island.  They formed a wide, swift current of broken water, which swirled and eddied about with a rough irregular motion.  As our boat passed the bowsprit of the Lydia, my father turned her head towards the ship, and my uncle Mansie was alert and ready to catch the coil of rope that was at that moment thrown down to us from the barque’s forecastle.

I think the rope was awkwardly thrown, or the man throwing it had miscalculated the rate at which we were driving past.  Howbeit, the rope fell across our stern, beyond Mansie’s reach.  Leaving the tiller my father seized it with the intention of passing it forward to my uncle, holding the coil in one hand and the line in the other.  As he rose from his seat, however, the rope was by some stupid mistake suddenly made secure on board the ship instead of being paid out, and my father was instantly jerked into the sea.

“Let go the rope!” Tom Hercus shouted to my father.

But the seaman in charge of the line on the ship’s deck, taking the order as meant for himself, cast off the rope, the end of which dropped overboard before the error was discovered.  Thus the rope my father held was fastened neither to the ship nor to the boat.  He was a powerful swimmer, but he soon became entangled in the coil of rope in such a manner that the more he struggled to free himself the worse became the tangle, so that his very efforts to swim made his position more difficult than if he had remained still.