Once she turned and moaned a temporary farewell to the brave little dory, her watery cradle, that had stood so much. She knew enough about boats to be sure that no craft with a keel could have served her so well.
“Oh! I hate to leave you to be pounded some more,” she gasped aloud, in the wildness surrounding her. “But you—you’ll be picked up later!” addressing the buffeted boat that was now, again, revolving in a maelstrom. “The squall is pretty well over at last; the sun will be coming out in a few minutes.”
There was, indeed, a pale glint all over these drab and lonely sands (she had never been in so lonely a spot before) which seemed to herald such a friendly move on the sun’s part.
The rain had entirely ceased. The wind was piping in an intermittent whistle, shrill, but low, before beginning to blow vigorously from the east.
Between the roar of the surf-waves a silence fell in which she could hear her heart pounding as she dragged herself along in her wet clothing, the water swishing in her canvas shoes which sank deep into the wet sands at every step.
The silence seemed to whisper to her a word: Quicksands. She drew a lost gasp as she remembered how Captain Andy said that a portion of the Neck with its flanking sandspits, as well as parts of the wet beach toward which she was heavily plodding, were, at low water, “studdled” with them—the tide was still far out.
Terrified anew, she put down her hands and crept along, animal-like, on all fours, feeling the sodden sands ahead of her to try to find out whether they were firm or not—the sands that Captain Andy said could “fool one” with their traps.
Now and again they oozed like a wet sponge. With difficulty she dragged her feet out.
Would she ever reach a firm, fairly dry spot, real terra firma?
