“How she can row!” Red told himself, as he felt the push of her oars send the boat along.
“When the time comes,” he said aloud, “we will make it.”
“Yes,” the girl replied, “but the time is not to-day.”
That she spoke the truth Red was soon enough to know. In the sheltered channel of Rock Harbor the waves were mere rushing ripples of foam. But once they came to a gap between two small islands that looked out into the open sea, great swells caught their frail craft and, tossing it back, flecked them with foam.
“The voice of many waters.” In the girl’s tone there was a touch of awe. “In that storm, on the open lake, no small boat could live. To-morrow we play.”
Surrendering himself to the will of the elements, Red Rodgers played. But even as they sent their boat gliding along to the time of a song, as they climbed some rocky ledge to stand breathless looking off at the storm-tossed waters, or fought their way forward through masses of tangled vegetation to some crag where they might find a broader view, he whispered to himself:
“I am keeping fit. Even this is training for the day that is to come.” And then, as his mind sobered, he wondered: “Will that day ever come?”
At noon they built a fire on a tiny beach and brewed coffee. They ate their lunch in silence. There was that about this day of storm which made silence seem a mood to prize.
Just as the sun was sinking in the west, they turned the prow of their boat into a narrow opening, then shot her squarely into the teeth of a storm. Throwing all the force of their perfect bodies into the business of rowing, they conquered one gigantic wave, another, another, and yet another.
Their boat was but a cork in the midst of a great ocean, yet they dared accept the wild waves’ challenge. Again, again, and yet again, they fought their way up and over, up and over until they were twenty boat-lengths out to sea.