“Hurrah!” shouted the brave girl the instant it died away. “We have two minutes and a half yet ere the cyclone reaches us. In two minutes we must reach the other side of that high rocky point, and in the remaining half minute we must get on the lee side of the great sheltering rocks. Courage all, and let every stroke tell!”
And there was need for courage, for already the white caps were around them, and behind them the waters hissed and shrieked like demons let loose and howling for their victims. The heavens were rapidly being overwhelmed with the blackness of darkness. But here is the point! Skillfully the two girls, who were in the stern of the canoes, steered them sharply around, and the strong strokes of Frank and Alec did the rest, and they were in the shelter of the rock. But it would only be safe for an instant.
“Now all spring for your lives!” again cried Rachel; “and let everything go, Frank, but your gun and some cartridges.”
“Can we not save the canoes?” shouted Alec.
“No, no!” cried Rachel. “It is our lives here only that we must think about, for the sake of those who even now, perhaps, are mourning us as dead.”
The shelter of the rocks was within a few flying bounds, and they were safe. It was an enormous rock that towered up some scores of feet, and on the lee side, where our young folks had found shelter, hung over for perhaps twenty feet. Fortunate indeed were they to have reached such a refuge.
A few seconds later, when, with backs against the mighty rock, they were in a measure recovering from the violent exertion of that fearful struggle, Winnie cried out, “O, where are the canoes?”
Not a vestige of them was ever after seen. They had been caught up in that cyclone that came thundering on so close behind that in the brief seconds in which the young people had run from them to the rock they had been picked up and whirled into oblivion.
“It is well,” said Alec, “I did not stop to try and save the one I was in. But why, Rachel, did you ask Frank to bring along his gun and ammunition?”
“You will soon see,” said the brave, thoughtful girl, “that they will be worth more to us and our anxious friends than the canoes.”