“Oh!” Greta covered her eyes.
Florence still stared straight away and continued to row. This was no time for flinching. She saw the battered wreck rise high in air. After that came moments of intense darkness, such darkness as seems solid, like a black wall at the dead of night.
When at last the blackness lifted, a flash of light showed the pillar of cloud far away and on the reef—not a sign of the ill-fated ship, the Pilgrim.
“Look!” Jeanne cried, pointing away in the other direction. “Look over there! A light!”
There could be no mistaking it. Off toward the entrance to Duncan’s Harbor was a swaying light.
“It’s a boat. Some sort of a boat. We—we’ll try to head that way.
“The ship,” Florence said soberly a moment later, “is gone! It was like an arm, that cloud, a great black arm reaching down and picking it up. I saw it. A waterspout, I suppose they’d call it. We—we were saved by God’s guidance.”
A short time later they found themselves approaching a small power boat that, tossing about over the waves, moved cautiously nearer.
To their great joy they found this to be Swen, and with him was Vincent Stearns.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” Swen said a trifle shamefacedly, once he had them on board and well within the narrows. “I was afraid. But when I saw that cloud, when I knew what was sure to happen, I got Vincent to come with me. Now here we are, and, thank God, you are safe!”