“Gone!” cried Rodd excitedly. “We didn’t want any more troubles, and it would have been dreadful to have been wet through again.”
“Don’t be too hopeful, my boy,” said Uncle Paul. “That may only be the advance guard of a far worse storm. It seems too much to think this is the end.”
“It might be all, sir,” said Joe Cross, “for it’s been an awful bad ’un, going on for hours in the distance.”
“Then we shall be having the water rise again,” cried Uncle Paul.
“Yes, sir; that’s what I thought,” replied the man, “and why I moored the boat so fast.”
“Quite right,” cried the doctor, “for likely enough we shall be having the water coming down from far away, and we must hold on here at any cost, or we shall be lost again.”
“What time do you suppose it is, Joe?” asked Rodd.
“Wants about a couple of hours to daylight, sir.”
“Morning!” cried the lads together. “Ah, then it will be easier to bear!”
During the rest of the darkness it was evident that the storm had passed over them. There were a few distant mutterings of thunder and little flickerings of lightning which grew fainter and fainter, to die away in the west.