It was all over in a moment—­a blinding flash of lightning, the report of a musket, a great peal of thunder, and the motor bearing the devoted girl hurled headlong over the cliff.

They found her there in the morning.  She lay on her side motionless, half buried in the sand, upturned towards the blue Highland sky, serene now after the passing of the storm.  Quiet and still she lay.  The sea-birds seemed to pause in their flight to look down on her.  The little group of Scotch people that had gathered stood and gazed at her with reverential awe.  They made no attempt to put her together.  It would have been useless.  Her gasoline tubes were twisted and bent, her tank burst, her sprockets broken from their sides, and her steering-gear an utter wreck.  The motor would never run again.

After a time they roused themselves from their grief and looked about for Hannah.  They found her.  She lay among the sand and seaweed, her fair hair soaked in gasoline.  Then they looked about for Oyster McShamus.  Him, too, they found, lying half buried in the grass and soaked in whisky.  Then they looked about for Ellen.  They found her lying across the door of the cottage half buried in Jamie’s breeches.

Then they gathered them up.  Life was not extinct.  They chafed their hands.  They rubbed their feet.  They put hot bricks upon their stomachs.  They poured hot whisky down their throats.  That brought them to.

Of course.

It always does.

They all lived.

But the feud was done for.  That was the end of it.  Hannah had put it to the bad.

VIII. —­ Soaked in Seaweed:  or, Upset in the Ocean
           (An Old-fashioned Sea Story.)

IT was in August in 1867 that I stepped on board the deck of the Saucy Sally, lying in dock at Gravesend, to fill the berth of second mate.

Let me first say a word about myself.

I was a tall, handsome young fellow, squarely and powerfully built, bronzed by the sun and the moon (and even copper-coloured in spots from the effect of the stars), and with a face in which honesty, intelligence, and exceptional brain power were combined with Christianity, simplicity, and modesty.

As I stepped on the deck I could not help a slight feeling of triumph, as I caught sight of my sailor-like features reflected in a tar-barrel that stood beside the mast, while a little later I could scarcely repress a sense of gratification as I noticed them reflected again in a bucket of bilge water.

“Welcome on board, Mr. Blowhard,” called out Captain Bilge, stepping out of the binnacle and shaking hands across the taffrail.

I saw before me a fine sailor-like man of from thirty to sixty, clean-shaven, except for an enormous pair of whiskers, a heavy beard, and a thick moustache, powerful in build, and carrying his beam well aft, in a pair of broad duck trousers across the back of which there would have been room to write a history of the British Navy.