“Hulloo!  Hulloo—­oo!”

A few frightened sea-birds flew out of the crevices in the cliff and wheeled about their heads, but there was no other sound.  Mrs. Beauchamp’s eyes filled with agonized tears, but the sailor’s cheeriness was infectious.

“I’ll wake them,” he said.

Again his voice went up into the night, as if he defied the poor defences of the dark.

“Hulloo!  Hulloo—­oo!”

“Susie!” cried Mrs. Beauchamp, in her thinner treble.

And this time there was an answer—­a cry small and faint; not at all like Susie’s boisterous everyday voice, but human.  Ben was out of the boat in a minute, scrambling from peak to peak, and shouting as he went.

Mrs. Beauchamp sat down with an uncertain movement, and covered her face with her hands; whilst Mr. Amherst, clinging to the rock for fear the ebbing tide should carry them out to sea, spoke to her with whimsical entreaty.  “Mrs. Beauchamp, please don’t faint until Nelson comes back!  Pull yourself together—­he expects us to do our duty; and, besides, you will frighten the children.”

The last suggestion had an instantaneous effect.  From that calm region where love and despair were alike forgotten she came back with a conscious effort to the unsteady boat, and Mr. Amherst’s alarmed eyes, and the lapping water against the bow.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Amherst, with great relief in his voice.  “I really didn’t know how to get to you.  Listen!”

“Safe!” The great voice came pealing down the cliff, waking the echoes on the shore, and with a sort of incredulous joy Mrs. Beauchamp listened to the sturdy steps coming slowly, surely, carefully down, with a little ripple of shale following them.

She clutched at the gunwale of the boat until she hurt her hands, and strained her eyes for the sight she longed to see.  First there came the stalwart figure of the sailor with a bundle in his arms, and behind him a slim, bare-footed, bareheaded, stumbling little creature, who almost fell into the expectant arms waiting for her.

“He’s quite warm, mother.”  It was Susie’s voice, faint, eager, appealing, caught by deep sobs.  “He has never coughed once—­he has never moved.  He is quite warm; feel him.”

“O Susie!  And you?”

“Me!  Oh, I’m all right,” said Susie, wondering.  “I did take care of him; I tried my very best.”

“But where are your clothes, Susie?  And it rained so.”

“They are round Dick,” said Susie.  “Mother, they kept him beautifully warm.”

The men jumped into the boat and pushed off.  The little bundle of flannel and serge that held Dickie rolled quite comfortably to the bottom of the boat; but Susie’s mother held two frozen feet in her warm hands and said nothing.  Words did not come easily.

Presently Susie spoke again in that strained whisper.  “Mother, when I went to sleep I dreamt a ferryman came for us, and his boat was close to the shore, and we were stepping in when you called me back.  I knew your voice, and you said ‘Susie’ quite plainly.  I wouldn’t go, and I wouldn’t let him take Dick!  I screamed and held him tight, and the ferryman said we must pay him, all the same; and then you gave him two pennies, and he went away.”