The lake was smooth as glass and ink black, and the look of it made me shiver, with four miles of it between us and home.
Jack raised the sail, but it hung limp, so there was nothing for it but to row. Jack and Clifford went to work, while I steered the boat. Clifford spoke once to me: we ignored each other, as a rule.
“Better keep her close in. We’ll try to round this point and run into the cove before she strikes.”
“If we don’t,” remarked Jack cheerfully, “she’ll flop us; and, oh mister, she won’t do a thing to us!”
I rather thought “she” would do several things to us, but I didn’t stop to argue the point—there wasn’t time. I don’t know just how it came about, but Jack was right—she “flopped” us.
We weren’t far from shore, so the upset wasn’t very serious. The water was so shallow we could easily wade ashore, though Mabel called for help, and, of course, it was Clifford who rescued her—from water no deeper than our bathtub! It is incredible, the foolishness of that girl!
I was first to climb the bank, and when I had watched the others land I just sat down in the wind and the rain and laughed. (Mabel says I will probably laugh at my own funeral; I’m positive I could have laughed at hers just then.) The idea of a great, overgrown girl like her (she weighs a hundred and fifty pounds if she weighs an ounce) sobbing on a young man’s shoulder! and the curl all out of her hair, and the complexion washed off her face in streaks. It’s a wonder she didn’t turn Clifford sick; but, then, men show dreadfully poor taste at times. I don’t suppose I was very entrancing myself just then, but, thank goodness, my complexion will bear washing!
The New Woman reached the shore, upside down, almost as soon as we did, and my old golf-cape, that Aunt Jane insists I shall carry with me always in the boat, dangled on a wave-washed willow. Jack waded in and rescued it and Aunt Jane’s little gray shawl (her green umbrella’s gone forever, for which I am very thankful). Mabel’s sailor-hat washed ashore while we stood there, and Clifford got that.
Then Jack remembered that there was an old cabin near there, and we found what had once been a well-trodden path leading back from the shore into the woods. We followed it dismally, with the lightning to guide us.
Jack led the way, reciting: “It was night! The vivid lightnings flashed athwart the vaulted sky and shook their fiery darts upon the shuddering earth. The elements were in wild commotion!”—or something like that. I think he got it out of a “Penny Dreadful.”