“Mr. Howbridge and Luke and Neale have gone hunting for springs again. Ruth told them she had just got to have fresh water. I don’t know what for,” Dot remarked. “They have almost got the engine fixed. I heard Neale say so. Let us go see it.”
This suggestion for action was better than no action at all. Tess agreed, and, unseen by the older girls, the two little ones made their way down to the rocky cove where the Isobel lay. She was not even at anchor now, for the anchor had been raised and the motor-boat drawn very close in to the rocks, as it was high tide. The log still lay like a gangplank from the rock to the forward part of the Isobel.
The boys and Mr. Howbridge had gone away and left the motor-boat in rather a precarious situation, but quite without realizing it. The tide was rising and that served to lift the log and make it rather unsafe for Tess and Dot to pass over; and when the little girls had done so, splash! The log fell into the water between the boat and the shore.
“O-oo! Now see what we’ve done,” gasped Dot.
“Never mind. Neale will find another. And we can stay here till he comes back,” Tess declared.
She did not notice, however, that the accident had brought a sudden strain upon the single line that bound the boat to the shore. This mooring was not very skillfully made, for neither Neale nor Luke were practical sailors, and so were not professional rope-knotters.
At any rate, with the falling of the log the hull of the Isobel strained at the small hawser, and that rope loosened, almost imperceptibly at first, from the rock around which it had been looped.
Tess and Dot did not see this. They got down into the cockpit, and from that place they could not see the rocks without standing up, nor could they be seen themselves from the shore.
The motor-boat rose and fell rather pleasantly upon the surface of the inlet. The tide had now risen to its highest point, and as it turned and began to recede, naturally everything afloat in the little cove began to drift out to sea. The log that had served as a gangplank between the Isobel and the shore went first, but soon the motor-boat likewise got into the tide and blundered out through the mouth of the narrow estuary.
Strange as it may seem, the two smallest Corner House girls did not discover what had happened until the bobbing motor-boat was quite a long way from the island. It was then the freshening wind, that made the boat “joggle,” which first annoyed Dot Kenway.