And then a strangely joyous thing happened.
Lucile’s eyes opened. She smiled faintly. Strange to say, in the midst of this tumult, she had merely fallen asleep.
Florence took a new and firmer grip on hope.
“How—how do you feel?” she stammered.
“I think I am better,” Lucile whispered. “Where are we?”
“We’re all right,” said Florence quickly. “Day is breaking. The storm will go down as the sun rises. They’ll be after us in a tug. In a few hours we’ll be back on the dock?”
She said all this very quickly, not knowing how much of it she believed herself, but feeling quite sure that Lucile ought to believe it. Just then a chair, pitching across the floor, caught her behind the knees and sent her sprawling.
The very shock of this set her blood tingling. “Believe we could do something about the furniture now it’s getting light,” she told herself.
“Marian,” she called, “come on down and let’s see what we can do to save things. We’re ruined as it is. No more university for us. It will take all the money we have to put this cabin back into condition. But we might as well save what we can.”
A table came lurching at her. She caught it as if it were a piece of gymnasium equipment. Then rescuing a water-soaked sheet from the floor she tied the table to a hand-rail.