“Why, there’s Pixley!” shouted Rosa. “See her trying to hold on to the fish. She’s sitting in the bottom of the boat.”
And those who looked saw the little woman just as Rosa said, trying desperately to keep her cargo from being washed overboard.
As she recognized the party in the Whitecap, however, she managed to shout her delight, for it appears she and her pilot had been battling the waves for some time before the launch came along.
“Ought to call you girls life-savers,” she called out. “This is the second time you have saved mine.”
“Maybe the third,” joked Nancy to Rosa, “for if I hadn’t saved her from the mob in the train when that grape juice bottle exploded—”
But Nancy just then saw a speck of light, like a spark, over in one of the group of islands from which they had lately embarked.
And it couldn’t have been lightning, for the storm, though imminent, had not yet broken and there was no rumble of thunder even in the distance.
She looked again, made sure of the spot, but said nothing to her companions. The appeal Orilla had silently given her, with that glance from her deep-set eyes, seemed to Nancy too pathetic to be made light of. And perhaps the spark of light in the woodland, away out there where nothing but low, scrubby pine trees grew, had something to do with Orilla’s secret. At any rate this was no time to discuss it. Confusion forbade.
“We’ll be in before it hits us,” called Gar gayly, surveying the racing storm clouds.
“And a good thing for us,” added his sister, “for even this launch is not altogether safe in a real lake hurricane.”