  “They are carrying us away!” Florence cried. Her tone was that of despair. “We must cut the tiller,” was Tillie’s answer. “Then they’ll run us down, as they did Jeanne and me.” “No matter! We must cut the tiller!” “But how? We have no knife.” Tillie thought a moment. Then once more she crept forward toward the bobbing prow. Once there, she gripped the boat’s gunwale, reached far forward, then set her teeth in the strong rope. The tiller was an extra thick one, and quite new. Nature had provided Tillie with a most excellent set of teeth. She used them now with a skill born of despair. Both she and Florence were strong swimmers. Though their boat were wrecked, they might still reach land. “If only we do not get out of the channel,” she thought as she renewed her attack on the stubborn strands of rope. As they left Hoyt’s Bay behind, the water grew rougher. Shooting forward, the slight rowboat plowed through waves instead of riding over them. Tillie was drenched to the skin. There were times when her very form was lost in spray. Yet she stuck to her post. Night had come. There was no moon. The sky was black. The sea was black. The night was cold. Florence shuddered. Then, feeling the water creeping over her feet, she began to bail. Tillie’s task was half done. How stout the rope was. The pull on it was tremendous, yet with half the strands cut, the boat rode on. “How—how many more strands?” she asked herself as she spat out a mouthful of bristly fibre. “Soon it will be too late,” she told herself. No longer could she distinguish land from water, but years of experience told her that they were fast leaving land behind, that they would, in a very brief space of time, be in the open waters of Lake Huron. “And then—” she breathed. She dare not think. The rope was at last three-fourths eaten away. The strain on the remaining strands was telling. They were beginning to stretch when suddenly a final cowardly and brutal act capped the atrocities of the heartless invisible ones. Had they been watching? Did they know the girl’s purpose? Had they judged their position? Who knows? Enough that of a sudden their boat gave a swerve to the right. It executed a curve that no light rowboat could endure. Next instant the girls found themselves pitched head foremost into the icy waters, while their empty boat sped on. Florence struck out with hands and feet. She gave herself half a minute to regain composure. Then she looked for Tillie. Tillie was swimming with one hand while she shook a belligerent fist at the fast disappearing speed boat. “Well!” she exclaimed when she had completed this ceremony to her satisfaction. “We are free!” “Free as a gull. Where’s land?” “I don’t know.” “How long can you swim?” “A long time. How long can you?” “A long time. But in this water?” “I don’t know. Boo! It’s cold. Let’s swim.” “Where to?” “I don’t know.” At that moment, as if in answer to an unuttered prayer, a strange thing happened. A golden light shone across the water. A golden disk appeared on the horizon. “The moon! Thank—thank God!” Tillie’s tone was reverent. “The moon, yes,” said Florence. “It usually rises.” “But can’t you see? It’s not rising behind water, but trees. That’s Goose Island over there. It’s three miles from the mainland.” “What’s Goose Island?” “It’s where we go fishing through the ice in winter.” “Anybody live there?” “No.” “Any cabins?” “No.” “Then—” Florence stopped herself. She was about to say that outside a cabin, with no fire, drenched to the skin, they would be chilled to death, when a voice seemed to whisper, “One thing at a time. Only one.” “We’ll swim for it,” she said quietly. “How far do you think it is?” “Two miles, perhaps.” Two miles! Her heart sank. “But the wind and waves are with us. We’ll make it.” “The winds and the waves obey Thy will,” rang through Florence’s ears. “Yes,” she replied, “we will make it.” For a long time there was no sound save the dip-dip of their strong arms and the occasional swirl of a whitecap as it broke near them. |
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