Then we discovered that a frightful thing had happened. We had let go the rope to the skiff! Whether Louisa had had hold of it or I, or neither of us, I don’t know. I only know that as Louisa drew me up after her, I chanced to kick the rowboat; it glided away and in the same moment was several feet from the Seven Stars.
I can’t say that I was awfully afraid just then. We must be able to get hold of the boat one way or another, I thought; but it drifted farther and farther out and there we stood.
Then we began to quarrel.
“It was your fault, Louisa; you pulled me so hard.”
“Why, the idea! It was you who kicked it away.”
“But you should have held on to the rope.”
“No, you should have held it.”
The boat drifted, drifted, farther and farther away. Neither of us could swim. What in the world should we do?
Not a person on Bird Island. Not a person on the other islands. Far, far back in the bay lay the town. Not a boat was to be seen—nothing, in fact, but gulls and sea-swallows flapping their white wings and whirling swiftly about in the air.
Louisa, with her freckled face and her white eyelashes, looked at me.