"Yes, let's hurry," was all she said. "It's later than I thought."
Martha summoned her straying flock, and they made for the boat.
The little clouds, no bigger than a man's hand, had turned gray. Francie's friends, the gulls, were darting excitedly to and fro, as if without direction, very close to the face of the water. Here and there the lake showed a white-cap.
Martha stood at the wheel, in the bow, and steered straight for the opposite shore.
For a while Mrs. Ronald kept up a careless chatter with the children, then, as if by common consent, there was silence.
A sharp wind had risen out of nowhere, apparently, and begun to lash the water into frothy fringes that tossed their beads of spray high over the side of the boat. Suddenly Francie screamed. This time it was not the spray, but the wave itself that the blast rushed before it to break full upon The Moth, drenching the child to the skin.
Martha glanced around to see what the trouble was.
"There's some tarpaulin under the seats," she shouted back over her shoulder, "wrap it about you an'—dry up!"
Again there was silence, while the clouds massed themselves into granite barricades, shutting out the light, and the gale gathered force and fury with every second. It was impossible, now, to see the farther shore. The little Moth seemed blindly fluttering in a dense mesh of gray mist impossible to penetrate.
"We're going every which way!" moaned Cora.