Nell stopped rowing to look at the incipient blister on her left palm.
Jessie bent near to see it, too. Nobody was looking across the bay toward the mainland.
"You'd better let me take the oars," Jessie said. "You'll have all the skin off your hand."
"Why should you skin yours?" demanded Nell. "These old oars are heavy."
"How dark it is getting!" drawled Amy. "Even the daylight saving time ought not to be blamed for this."
Jessie looked up, startled. Over the mainland a black cloud billowed, and as she looked lightning whipped out of it and flashed for a moment like a searchlight.
"A thunderstorm is coming!" she cried. "We'd better turn back."
But when Nell looked up and saw the coming tempest she knew she could never row back to the inlet before the wind, at least, reached them.
"We'll go right ashore," she said with confidence.
"What do you say, Amy?" Jessie asked.
"Far be it from me to interfere," said the other Roselawn girl, carelessly, and without even turning around to look. "I'm in the boat and will go wherever the boat goes."
Nell, settling to the oars again with vigor, remarked:
"One thing sure, we don't want the boat overturned and have to follow it to the bottom. Oh! Hear that thunder, will you?"
Amy woke up at last. She twitched about in the stern and stared at the storm cloud. It was already raining over the port, and long streamers of rain were being driven by the rising wind out over the bay.
"Wonderful!" she murmured.
"Where are you going, Nell?" suddenly shrieked Jessie. "The boat is actually turning clear around!"
"Don't blame me!" gasped Nell. "I am pulling straight on, but that girl has twisted the rudder lines. Do see what you are about, Amy, and please be careful!"
"My goodness!" gasped the girl in the stern. "It's going to storm out here, too."
She frantically tried to untangle the rudder lines; but while she had been lying idly there, she had twisted them together in a rope, and she was unable to untwist them immediately. Meanwhile the thunder rolled nearer, the lightning flashed more sharply, and they heard the rain drumming on the surface of the water. Little froth-streaked waves leaped up about the boat and all three of the girls realized that they were in peril.
CHAPTER XVIII--FROM ONE THING TO ANOTHER
"Let 'em alone, Amy!" begged Jessie, from the bow. "You are only twisting the boat's head around and making it harder for Nell to row."
"I--could--do better--if the rudder was unshipped," declared Nell, pantingly.
Immediately Amy jerked the heavy rudder out of its sockets. Fortunately she had got the lines over her head before doing this, or she might have been carried overboard.
For the rudder was too much for Amy. The rising waves tore it out of her hands the instant it was loose, and away it went on a voyage of its own.
"There!" exclaimed Jessie, with exasperation. "What do you suppose that grouchy old man will say when we bring him back his boat without the rudder?"
"He won't say so much as he would if we didn't bring him back his boat at all," declared Amy. "I'll pay for the rudder."
Jessie felt that the situation was far too serious for Amy to speak so carelessly. She urged Nell to let her help with the oars; and, in truth, the other found handling the two oars with the rising waves cuffing them to and fro rather more than she had bargained for.
Jessie shipped the starboard oar in the bow and together she and Nell did their very best. But the wind swooped down upon them, tearing the tops from the waves and saturating the three girls with spray.
"I guess I know what that white-haired boy tried to tell us," gasped Amy, from the stern. "He must have seen this thunderstorm coming."
"All the other boats got ashore," panted Nell. "We were foolish not to see."
"Nobody on lookout--that's it!" groaned Amy. "Oh!"
A streak of lightning seemed to cross the sky, and the thunder followed almost instantly. Down came the rain--tempestuously. It drove over the water, flattening the waves for a little, then making the sea boil.
"Hurry up, girls!" wailed Amy. "Get ashore--do! I'm sopping wet."
Jessie and Nell had no breath with which to reply to her. They were pulling at the top of their strength. The shore was not far away in reality. But it seemed a long way to pull with those heavy oars.
The rain swept landward and drove everybody, even the few bathers, to cover. The shallow water was torn again into whitecaps and a lot of spray came inboard as Jessie and Nell tried their very best to reach the strand.
Amy could do nothing but encourage them. There was no way by which she might aid their escape from the tempest. One thing, she did nothing to hinder! Even she was in no mood for "making fun."
In fact, this tempest was an experience such as none of the three girls had seen before. Jessie and Nell were well-nigh breathless and their arms and shoulders began to ache.
"Let me exchange with one of you, Nell! Jess!" cried Amy, her voice half drowned by the noise of wind and rain.
"Stay where you are!" commanded Jessie, from the bow, as her chum started to come forward. "You might tip us over!"
"Sit down!" sang the cheerful Nell. "Sit down, you're rocking the boat!"
"But I want to help!" complained Amy.
"You did your helping when you got rid of that rudder," returned Nell, comfortingly. "Do be still, Amy Drew!"
"How can one be still in such a jerky, pitching boat?" gasped the other girl. "Do--do you think you can reach land, Jessie Norwood?"
"I've hopes of it," responded her chum. "It isn't very far."
"I wonder how far it is to--to land underneath the keel?" sputtered Amy.
"For pity's sake stop that!" cried Nell Stanley. "Don't suggest such gloomy and gruesome things."
"Well," grumbled Amy, "I believe it's the nearest land."
"I shouldn't be surprised," panted Jessie. "But don't talk about it, Amy."
The rain swept over and past the small boat in such heavy sheets that finally the girls could scarcely see the shore at all. Amy found something to do--and something of importance. Although not much water slopped into the boat over the sides, the rain itself began to fill the bottom. The water was soon ankle deep.