Gerda said, casually: “Oh, we’ve been in the same sort of spot before. We’ll get by.”
Fine rain appeared on the windscreen and the darkness came down like a shutter. The two brilliant pools of light from the head-lamps lit the road, making the grapefruit trees and the lemon trees look grotesque as they flashed by them.
Above the soft note of the Lincoln engine they could hear the moan of the wind, and out to sea came the thundery roar of the rollers smashing themselves to foam on the beach.
A vivid and jagged flash of lightning lit the sky and the first clap of thunder startled them. The rain began to fall in earnest and Denny switched on the rain-wipers. He drove slowly, as he found it difficult to see through the windscreen.
“I hope it’s not going to get worse than this,” he said suddenly.
“Oh, it will,” Stella told him. “This is just the beginning. The wind hasn’t reached its height yet.”
As she spoke the wind suddenly increased, making a shrill, whistling noise. Denny felt the car shudder against it, nearly coming to a halt. He fed the engine more gas and the speedometer needle crawled up to twenty miles an hour.
“I guess we’d better get under cover,” he said. “I wish now that we had stayed at New Smyrna for the night. Keep a look-out for a house, will you? I don’t care to drive much further in this.”
“Oh, let’s go on,” Gerda said quickly. “Fort Pierce is only about twenty miles from here.”
Denny grunted. The lightning was beginning to worry him. It leapt about the dark sky, lighting the trees which swayed almost to the ground from the blast of the wind. The Lincoln was crawling now, although he kept his foot hard on the accelerator. He reckoned the wind must be blowing at well over a hundred miles an hour.