This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my belt, hoping to make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my confusion that it had suffered from the same misadventure, being cracked in the bottom, and every drop of the contents gone.

That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but Martin went on whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if nothing had happened.

The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over the sea, the boom of the billows on the rock became still more terrible, and I began to shiver.

“The sack!” cried Martin.  “We allus sleeps in sacks when we’re out asploring.”

I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed me up in the sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle, telling me I was as right as ninepence, I began to think of something I had read in a storybook, and half choking with sobs I said: 

“Martin!”

“What now, shipmate?”

“It’s all my fault . . . and I’m just as frightened as Jimmy Christopher’s sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . and I’m not a stunner . . . and you’ll have to give me up . . . and leave me here and save yourself and . . .”

But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter.

“Not me!  Not much!  We never leaves a pal when we’re out asploring.  Long as we lives we never does it.  Not never!”

That finished me.  I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus, who was sitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my howling.

What happened next I never rightly knew.  I was only aware, though my back was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string, had leapt up to the bell and was swinging his little body from the tongue to make a louder clamour.  One loud clang I heard, and then came a crash and a crack, and then silence.

“What is it?” I cried, but at first there was no answer.

“Have you hurt yourself?”

And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the rock, came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right arm) mingled with the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable little soul was struggling to suppress—­

“We never minds a bit of hurt . . . we never minds nothing when we’re out asploring!”

Meantime on shore there was a great commotion.  My father was railing at Aunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was crying for Father Dan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who was putting his horse into his gig and scouring the parish in search of the two lost children.

But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the potting-shed and thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea, hurried off to the shore, where he found his boat bobbing on the beach, and thereby came to his own conclusions.

By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary’s Rock, and there, guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great little explorers, hardly more than three feet above high water, lying together in the corn sack, locked in each other’s arms and fast asleep.