ar up against wind and
tide, for he put forth his giant strength with the energy of a desperate
man, but gradually he was carried away from the rock, and for the first
time his heart sank within him.

Just then one of those rushes or swirls of water, which are common among
rocks in such a position, swept him again forward, right into the eddy
which he had struggled in vain to reach, and thrust him violently
against the rock. This back current was the precursor of a tremendous
billow, which came towering on like a black moving wall. Ruby saw it,
and, twining his arm amongst the seaweed, held his breath.

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_.

[The author has himself bathed in Port 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