“I guess I’ll swim ashore!” laughed Alice, who thought the experience a lark it was so unusual.
And as they talked the lightning flashed and sparkled; the thunder roared deafeningly and the rain on the car and on the water around them made so much noise they had to yell to make each other hear.
Suddenly Mrs. Merrill happened to think of time. She glanced at her watch and exclaimed, “It’s four o’clock! If I recall rightly from yesterday on the beach that’s nearly high tide. If that’s the case the water won’t get any higher.”
“What’s tide?” asked Mary Jane.
“It’s the rising and falling of the water, dear,” said Mrs. Merrill. “Twice a day the water spreads out a few feet over the land and twice a day it goes back. Some other time I’ll tell you more about it. If the water doesn’t come up much deeper here we’ll not be in any real danger and I think we’d better sit still till the storm goes over. Surely such a hard storm will not last long.”
So they tried to settle themselves comfortably for a long wait. But it wasn’t easy. The roar of the thunder and the water and the weird light from the storm’s bright flashes made them all uneasy. They played twenty questions and they counted the seconds on Mrs. Merrill’s watch between the lightning and the thunder. But nothing seemed very interesting.
“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” suggested Mrs. Berry, “let’s talk about where we are going and what we plan to see before we go back up north. That will be fun.”
And it was. Mrs. Merrill said she and the girls planned to go back to Jacksonville in a day or two where they hoped to meet Mr. Merrill.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” exclaimed Mrs. Berry, “that these girls are going home without a ride up the Ocklawaha? That seems a shame!”
“The Ocklawaha?” questioned Mrs. Merrill; “I don’t believe I know that trip.”