As they left Hoyt’s Bay behind, the water grew rougher. Shooting forward, the slight rowboat plowed through waves instead of riding over them. Tillie was drenched to the skin. There were times when her very form was lost in spray. Yet she stuck to her post.
Night had come. There was no moon. The sky was black. The sea was black. The night was cold. Florence shuddered. Then, feeling the water creeping over her feet, she began to bail.
Tillie’s task was half done. How stout the rope was. The pull on it was tremendous, yet with half the strands cut, the boat rode on.
“How—how many more strands?” she asked herself as she spat out a mouthful of bristly fibre.
“Soon it will be too late,” she told herself. No longer could she distinguish land from water, but years of experience told her that they were fast leaving land behind, that they would, in a very brief space of time, be in the open waters of Lake Huron.
“And then—” she breathed. She dare not think.
The rope was at last three-fourths eaten away. The strain on the remaining strands was telling. They were beginning to stretch when suddenly a final cowardly and brutal act capped the atrocities of the heartless invisible ones. Had they been watching? Did they know the girl’s purpose? Had they judged their position? Who knows? Enough that of a sudden their boat gave a swerve to the right. It executed a curve that no light rowboat could endure. Next instant the girls found themselves pitched head foremost into the icy waters, while their empty boat sped on.
Florence struck out with hands and feet. She gave herself half a minute to regain composure. Then she looked for Tillie. Tillie was swimming with one hand while she shook a belligerent fist at the fast disappearing speed boat.
“Well!” she exclaimed when she had completed this ceremony to her satisfaction. “We are free!”
“Free as a gull. Where’s land?”