Jessica, after she got a grip on herself and did the hardest thing that a girl could do under the circumstances—to lie flat, outwardly calm, and let herself be spun and whirled in the trough of the sea, driven whither the wind chose to carry her—remembered its existence.
Slipping a hand behind her, she drew it out of the “rising” pocket in which it was stuck and began to ladle out the water on either side of her as one might ladle soup.
She soon realized the wisdom of Captain Andy’s advice, for while she lay “flat as a pancake” or a flounder, the buoyant, flat-bottomed dory rode the waves, bow on, side on, stern on, any way on, without capsizing; indeed, the little boat seemed to enjoy the wet dance.
And, now and again, strange as it may seem, the girl felt a queer thrill of enjoyment or excitement shoot through her fear, although she was very much ashamed of the unconscious foolhardiness which had got her into such a plight as this and was at intervals tortured by the thought of how others must be suffering, now, on her account, her fellow-campers on the Sugarloaf, Guardian and Camp Fire Girls.
There was one human companion who seemed to be near her, although long ago the seas had closed over him, just because her girlish imagination saw in him such an heroic figure; that was her great-grandfather.
It was when she thought of him that she felt the thrill of exhilaration; she was having an experience on a small scale of the brine-fighting perils amid which his life, as a sea-captain, had been passed and she grew more and more determined to meet it with a courage worthy of his great-grandchild.
So, when the dory mounted on the back of a white-headed comber and then slid down into a hollow, shipping a small torrent of water over its side, so that she lay in a pool, her short skirt, green, woolen sweater and uncovered hair soaked, she raised herself a little cautiously and bailed “for all she was worth,” knowing that the one imminent danger was that, between the united deluge of rain and wave, the plucky twelve-foot boat might fill and be swamped.
Thus she managed to hold drowning at bay until she became aware of the before-mentioned change in the forces at war with her; for one thing the rain grew lighter; there was a break in the heavy clouds above; the sou’westerly gusts seemed tired of roaring and chopping up the tidal waves; they sank to a lull like a beating of weary wings in the air about her and over the wild bar just ahead of her boat.
And then, all at once, the dory began upon a new figure in its watery dance to the tune of a new, piping whisper in the wind; it stood still, shuddering and rocking, the brave boat, as if afraid to go farther, then it sidled this way and that, waddled like a stranded duck, waltzed with a wave as partner, backed like a perverse donkey, cut about every caper that a rudderless rowboat could devise.
“I do believe the wind is shifting!” Jessica’s heart waltzed with the dory. “It’s changing round to the east—I’m sure of it—if it’s with the tide, instead of against it, I may be swept back up the river again.”