h service before;
and, presently, the coastguardsmen, the boys, and Rover, who would not
let go his young master's collar and was lifted out along with him, were
all once more again on firm ground.

By this time, a small crowd of spectators had collected on the spot,
composed principally of persons who had come out for a walk round the
castle and had their attention arrested by the scene passing in the
water below.

The majority of these now, in company with Mrs Gilmour and Nellie,
hurried to the lower part of the rampart, which, on the side nearer the
harbour, did not shelve down there so abruptly, broadening out by
degrees to a wide flat surface where it joined the esplanade bordering
the beach.

At this spot, the coastguardsmen laid down the rescued boys, who were
quite insensible from their long immersion; when Rover, at length
satisfied that his young master was ashore and in safe hands, was
persuaded to loose his grip of Bob's collar, contenting himself by
venting his joy in a series of bounds and barks around his inanimate
form and licking his apparently lifeless face.

Both Mrs Gilmour and the weeping Nellie thought they were dead.

"Poor boys!" sobbed the former, her tears falling in sympathy with those
of the little girl, who was too stunned to speak. "But, what shall I
say to Bob's mother? How can I tell her he is drowned?"

"Drowned? Not a bit of it--no more drowned than you are!" repeated the
Captain, somewhat snappishly, his anxiety and excitement preventing him
from speaking calmly, as he turned and bent over the inanimate bodies.
"Help me, men, to rouse them back to life."

The coastguardsmen bent down, too, and lifting the boys up were
proceeding to lay them down again on their faces, when the Captain
stopped them.

"You idiots!" he exclaimed. "What are you going to do, eh?"

"Why, to let the water run out of 'em, sir," replied the elder of the
two, looking up in his face and touching his forelock with his finger in
proper nautical salute. "Ain't that right, sir?"

"Hullo! that you, Hellyer?" cried the old gentleman, recollecting him as
a former coxswain. "Glad to see you again. By Jove, you came just now
in the very nick of time to save these youngsters! Excuse me though;
but, you've got hold of the same foolish idea a lot of other people
have, that turning a poor half-drowned body upside down to empty him, as
if he were a rum-cask, is the best way to recover him!"

"What should w