It was then that Florence began to believe in Jeanne’s strange notion, that this Lone Fisherman was no real fisherman at all and his boat no real boat, but that it was a phantom boat manned by a ghostly fisherman.
“More than one small craft has vanished,” she thought with a shudder. “The Flying Dutchman of Superior,” she whispered. She laughed at her own superstitious imagination, but the laugh was followed by a shudder. And at that moment the sun went under a cloud.
CHAPTER XVIII
FATHER SUPERIOR AT HIS WORST
The instant the sun left them the whole world appeared to change. The water lay all about them black and threatening. Land seemed miles away. Florence shook herself. Then she glanced up at the sun. The cloud was but a small one. Already the sun was painting a golden rim along its lower edge.
“The rocks,” said Katie, “are down there.”
Looking down into the water at the side of the boat, Florence was startled. The water was crystal clear. The great masses of rocks were so real that they seemed dry land. “As if we were floating on air above it,” she told herself. It was strange.
“This is the place,” said Katie, as, a moment later, they passed across the far end of that submerged reef. “You go across fast.” Her stout arms sent the boat racing. “Then you drop your oars and let the lure sink down, down, down. If you don’t get a rock, you—”
She did not finish, for at that instant something all but dragged the pole from her companion’s hands.
“There!” Katie exclaimed, “You’ve got—”
But no! The line went slack.