The answer came to her at once. Beyond him was the outline of a small power boat. He was rowing toward that.
Strangely enough, just as he reached the motor boat’s side, a current of air lifted the smoke and everything stood out clearly.
“It is that boy,” Florence said aloud. “But what’s he doing?”
“Standing up in his row-boat,” said Katie.
“Putting on a sweater. A crimson sweater!” Florence was ready to fall from the boat in her excitement. “He—he’s that boy, the boy in the crimson sweater. And how he has fought this fire!
“And that motor boat!” she exploded again. “It’s the one Jeannie says carries the Phantom Fisherman.”
Then, as if a curtain had been dropped, the smoke fell hiding the boy in the crimson sweater, the Phantom and all. Was Florence sorry? She could not tell.
She did not know it at that moment, but this was the last time she was to see either the Phantom or the boy in the crimson sweater on Isle Royale.
“It’s the end,” Florence thought, as they went chugging back toward Tobin’s Harbor. “The wind is really shifting. It will drive the fire back upon itself.” Even as she thought this, cold drops of rain struck her cheek. Rolling up from across the lake a real rainstorm, the first in weeks, was on its way.
Two hours later, drenched to the skin but joyously happy, the little party arrived at Tobin’s Harbor.