Frank threw himself on
his knees, and prayed them to take her to land. They did not know his
words, but they understood his prayer. He kissed her lips--he chafed her
hands--he wrung the water out of her hair--he held her feet against his
warm breast.
"She is not dead," he kept saying to the men, as he saw their sorrowful,
pitying looks.
The kind people at Llandudno had made ready their own humble beds, with
every appliance of comfort they could think of, as soon as they understood
the nature of the calamity which had befallen the ship on their coasts.
Frank walked, dripping, bareheaded, by the body of his Margaret, which was
borne by some men along the rocky sloping shore.
"She is not dead!" he said. He stopped at the first house they came to. It
belonged to a kind-hearted woman. They laid Maggie in her bed, and got the
village doctor to come and see her.
"There is life still," said he, gravely.
"I knew it," said Frank. But it felled him to the ground. He sank first
in prayer, and then in insensibility. The doctor did everything. All that
night long he passed to and fro from house to house; for several had swum
to Llandudno. Others, it was thought, had gone to Abergele.
In the morning Frank was recovered enough to write to his father,
by Maggie's bedside. He sent the letter off to Conway by a little
bright-looking Welsh boy. Late in the afternoon she awoke.
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