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.
One of the bathing house men ran out to help pull the bow of the boat up on the sands.
"Run along up to the hotel!" he cried. "There is no good shelter down here for you."
The moment they could do so the three girls leaped ashore. Thus relieved of their weight, the boat was the more easily dragged out of the reach of the waves, which now began to roll in madly. The lightning increased in its intensity, the thunder reverberated from the bluff. The tempest was at its height when they hastened to mount the winding wooden stair.
"Oh, my blister! Oh, my blister!" moaned Nell, as she climbed upward.