under the towering cliff wall. The skipper looked for a suitable mooring place.
Just then little Anna pulled at her mother's arm, and said: "Mamma, Selma is crying."
True, the child sat weeping. She had not been at all afraid during the sail—not till that moment. She, like the others, had thought it would be great fun to go ashore on Gray Island; but now that they were right under the rocky cliff, it looked so dark and menacing.
They all asked her why she was crying, but she would not say. She could not tell them she was afraid of a rock. However, she escaped further questioning, for the skipper had at last found a landing-place, and they had something else to think of.
The instant the boat struck. Professor Lundström seized the painter and jumped ashore. Then, as if an invisible hand had dealt him a blow in the chest, he staggered backwards and slipped off the ledge into the sea.
There was great consternation, and cries of alarm went up, but there was no long agony of suspense. With the swiftness of a gull after a fish, the skipper reached over the side of the boat, nabbed the long professor by the coat-collar and drew him up, dripping wet, of course, but quite unhurt.
Naturally, they were all very much shaken by the ghastly sight of a man going down into the perilous deep, and though, luckily, nothing serious had happened, they could not throw off their depression.
