At eight o’clock, Phyllis arrived, escorted by Ted. “My!” she exclaimed, shaking the raindrops from her clothes as she stood on the porch, “but this is going to be a night! Father says the papers have warnings that we should probably get the tail-end of a West Indian hurricane that was headed this way, and I guess it has come! It’s getting worse every minute. Have you seen how the tide is rising? Get on your things and come down to the beach. Ted brought me, because I could hardly stand up against the wind. He’s going back presently. Come and see how the water is rising!”
“Oh, hush!” implored Leslie, glancing nervously toward her aunt. “You’ve no idea how upset Aunt Marcia is already,” she whispered. “She’ll be distracted if she gets an idea there’s any danger.”
“Forgive me!” returned Phyllis, contritely. “I really didn’t think, for a moment. Father says there probably isn’t any real danger. The tide has almost never risen as far as these bungalows, except in winter; and if the worst comes to the worst, we can always get out of them and walk away. But this threatens to be the worst storm of the kind we’ve had in years. Are you coming down to see the water?”
“If Aunt Marcia doesn’t mind. But if she’s afraid to be left alone, I won’t.”
“Oh, Ted will be here, and we’ll just run down for a minute or two. It’s really a great sight!”
Ted very thoughtfully offered to stay, and the two girls, wrapped to the eyes, pushed through the blinding rain and wind down to where the breakers were pounding their way up the beach, spreading, when they broke, farther and farther inland. So terrific was the impact of the wind, that the girls had to turn their backs to it when they wanted to speak.
“I brought you out here, as much as anything, because I had something to say,” shouted Phyllis, her voice scarcely audible to the girl close beside her. “If the tide keeps on like this, it will probably wash away what we’ve hidden by the old log. And probably others who are concerned with that may be thinking of the same thing. We’ve got to keep a close watch. I believe things are going to happen to-night!”
“But don’t you think we’d better dig it up ourselves, right away?” suggested Leslie. “We can’t very well go out to do it later when it may be necessary, and surely you want to save it.”
“Certainly not!” declared Phyllis. “I don’t care if it is washed away. What I want is the fun of seeing the other parties breaking their necks to rescue it. If it’s washed away they’ll think the real article has disappeared, and then we’ll see what next! Let’s take one more look at the surf and then go back.”
They peered out for a moment into the awe-inspiring blackness where an angry ocean was eating into the beach. Then, battling back against the wind, they returned to the house. Ted, having ascertained that there was no further service he could render, suggested that he had better go back and help his father stop a leak in the roof of Fisherman’s Luck, which had suddenly proved unseaworthy.