The billow fell!  Only those who have seen the Bell Rock in a storm can properly estimate the roar that followed.  None but Ruby himself could tell what it was to feel that world of water rushing overhead.  Had it fallen directly upon him, it would have torn him from his grasp and killed him, but its full force had been previously spent on Cunningham’s Ledge.  In another moment it passed, and Ruby, quitting his hold, struck out wildly through the foam.  A few strokes carried him through Sinclair’s and Wilson’s tracks into the little pool formerly mentioned as Port Stevenson.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The author has himself bathed in Fort Stevenson, so that the reader may rely on the fidelity of this description of it and the surrounding ledges.]

Here he was in comparative safety.  True, the sprays burst over the ledge called The Last Hope in heavy masses, but these could do him no serious harm, and it would take a quarter of an hour at least for the tide to sweep into the pool.  Ruby therefore swam quietly to Trinity Ledge, where he landed, and, stepping over it, sat down to rest, with a thankful heart, on Smith’s Ledge, the old familiar spot where he and Jamie Dove had wrought so often and so hard at the forge in former days.

He was now under the shadow of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, which towered high above his head; and the impression of immovable solidity which its cold, grey, stately column conveyed to his mind, contrasted powerfully with the howling wind and the raging sea around.  It seemed to him, as he sat there within three yards of its granite base, like the impersonation of repose in the midst of turmoil; of peace surrounded by war; of calm and solid self-possession in the midst of fretful and raging instability.

No one was there to welcome Ruby.  The lightkeepers, high up in the apartments in their wild home, knew nothing and heard nothing of all that had passed so near them.  The darkness of the night and the roaring of the storm was all they saw or heard of the world without, as they sat in their watch tower reading or trimming their lamps.

But Ruby was not sorry for this; he felt glad to be alone with God, to thank Him for his recent deliverance.

Exhausting though the struggle had been, its duration was short, so that he soon recovered his wonted strength.  Then, rising, he got upon the iron railway, or “rails”, as the men used to call it, and a few steps brought him to the foot of the metal ladder conducting to the entrance door.

Climbing up, he stood at last in a place of safety, and disappeared within the doorway of the lighthouse.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WRECK

Meantime the French privateer sped onward to her doom.

The force with which the French commander fell when Ruby cast him off, had stunned him so severely that it was a considerable time before he recovered.  The rest of the crew were therefore in absolute ignorance of how to steer.