“The shoals’ll come up, sudden-like, clost to the top of the water, most any time now,” Gib said, “so keep watchin’ ahead. If you see a place whar the color’s different, sort o’ shallow lookin’, jest sing out an’ I’ll pull away.”
Nann, thrilling with the excitement of a new adventure, looked over the side of the punt and into water so deep and dark green that it seemed bottomless, but all at once they sailed right over a sharp-pointed rock. Then another appeared, and another.
“Gib!” the girl’s cry was startled, “you’d better stop sailing now and take the oars, slowly, for if we hit a rock, way out here, and capsize, pray, who would there be to save us?”
Nann shuddered as she gazed ahead at the gray, grim island. A flock of long-legged, long-beaked and altogether ungainly looking seabirds arose from the rocks with shrill, unearthly screams, and, after circling overhead for a moment they landed a safe distance away. There was no other sign of life.
Gibralter let the sail flap at the girl’s suggestion and began to row slowly along on the sheltered side of the island.
“Hark!” Nann said, lifting one hand. “Just hear how the surf is pounding on the outer coast. Don’t go too far, Gib; see how the water swirls around the rocks where they jut out into the sea.”
As he rowed slowly along, the boy kept a keen-eyed watch along the shore. “Thar’d ought to be a place whar a body could land safely,” he said at last. Then added excitedly as he pointed: “Look’et; thar’s a big flat shoal that goes way up to the island, an’ I’m sure as anything this here punt could slide right up over it an’ never touch bottom. Are ye game to try it, Miss Nann? Say, are ye?”
The girl looked at the wide, flat shoal that was about two feet under water and which was evidently connected with the island. Then she looked at the eager face of the boy. “I dare, if you dare,” she said with a bright smile.
Gibralter managed to row the punt boat within a length of the island over the submerged shoal, and then it stuck.
“Well,” Nann remarked, “I suppose we will have to stay here until the rising tide lifts us off.”