When Bumpus struck the water, after being tossed over the cliff, his head was fortunately downward; and his skull, being the thickest and hardest bone in his body, had withstood the terrible shock to which it had been subjected without damage, though the brain within was, for a time, incapacitated from doing duty.  When John rose again to the surface, after a descent into unfathomable water, he floated there in a state of insensibility.  Fortunately the wind and tide combined to wash him to the shore, where a higher swell than usual launched him among the coral rocks, and left him there, with only his feet in the water.

“Oh! here he is,—­hurrah!” shouted Corrie, on catching sight of the prostrate form of the seaman.  But the boy’s manner changed the instant he observed the color of the man’s face, from which all the blood had been driven, leaving it like a piece of brown leather.

“He’s dead,” said Alice, wringing her hands in despair.

“P’raps not,” suggested Poopy, with a look of deep wisdom, as she gazed on the upturned face.

“Anyhow, we must haul him out of the water,” said Corrie, whose chest heaved with the effort he made to repress his tears.

Catching up one of Bumpus’s huge hands, the boy ordered Alice to grasp the other.  Poopy, without waiting for orders, seized hold of the hair of his head, and all three began to haul with might and main.  But they might as well have tried to pull a line-of-battle ship up on the shore.  The man’s bulky form was immovable.  Seeing this, they changed their plan, and, all three grasping his legs, slewed him partially round, and thus drew his feet out of the water.

“Now we must warm him,” said Corrie, eagerly; for, the first shock of the discovery of the supposed dead body of his friend being over, the sanguine boy began to entertain hopes of resuscitating him.  “I’ve heard that the best thing for drowned people is to warm them:  so, Alice, do you take one hand and arm, Poopy will take the other, and I will take his feet, and we’ll all rub away till we bring him to; for we must, we shall bring him round.”

Corrie said this with a fierce look and a hysterical sob.  Without more words he drew out his clasp-knife, and, ripping up the cuffs of the man’s coat, laid bare his muscular arm.  Meanwhile Alice untied his neckcloth, and Poopy tore open his Guernsey frock and exposed his broad, brown chest.

“We must warm that at once,” said Corrie, beginning to take off his jacket, which he meant to spread over the seaman’s breast.

“Stay! my petticoat is warmer,” cried Alice, hastily divesting herself of a flannel garment of bright scarlet, the brilliant beauty of which had long been the admiration of the entire population of Sandy Cove.  The child spread it over the seaman’s chest, and tucked it carefully down at his sides, between his body and the wet garments.  Then the three sat down beside him, and, each seizing a limb, began to rub and chafe with a degree of energy that nothing could resist.  At any rate it put life into John Bumpus; for that hardy mariner gradually began to exhibit signs of returning vitality.