“I’ve hopes of it,” responded her chum. “It isn’t very far.”
“I wonder how far it is to—to land underneath the keel?” sputtered Amy.
“For pity’s sake stop that!” cried Nell Stanley. “Don’t suggest such gloomy and gruesome things.”
“Well,” grumbled Amy, “I believe it’s the nearest land.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” panted Jessie. “But don’t talk about it, Amy.”
The rain swept over and past the small boat in such heavy sheets that finally the girls could scarcely see the shore at all. Amy found something to do—and something of importance. Although not much water slopped into the boat over the sides, the rain itself began to fill the bottom. The water was soon ankle deep.
“Bail it! Bail it!” shouted Nell.
“Oh! is that what the tin dipper is for?” gasped Amy. “I—I thought it was to drink out of.”
Afterward “Amy’s drinking cup” made a joke, but just then nobody laughed at the girl’s mistake. She set to work with vigor to bail out the boat, and kept it up “for hours and hours” she declared, though the others insisted it was “minutes and minutes.”
At last they reached the strand.