All this while the boys were growing crimson in the face from the gigantic efforts they made, and the girls very pale with fright. Solly kept repeating,—
"Don't you be afraid, girls!" but his voice faltered as he said it; and as for Freddy Jackson, the trembling of his mute lips was as eloquent as speech. The two boys might put on what blustering airs they pleased—it all amounted to nothing; there was more power in the wind than in the muscles of their small arms. The boat would not go near the shore: anywhere else but there. The sky grew more and more threatening, and the wind increased in force.
"We're going to be drow—drow—drownded!" screamed Dotty; "and I told you so: I knew it before! O, if Susy was here with a shingle!"
"We're going to be drownded!" cried Lina; "and, Solly Rosenberg, you hadn't oughter made me come!"
"And you told an awful, wicked story," struck in Dotty, "for, Solly Rosenberg, you said you's old enough to row, and you're nowhere near old enough; and, O! O! O! you don't know how. And I'll tell my father! And he'll never know where I am! And my mother's gone away to aunt Maria Clifford's, and I'm going to be dead when she gets back! And you won't try to row! Susy could row if she was here, and had a shingle. But Susy isn't here, and hasn't any shingle! O! O!"
All these sentences Dotty thrust out, one after another, having little idea what she said, only conscious of an overwhelming terror and an impulse to keep talking.
Suddenly poor Solly Rosenberg dropped his oar, exclaiming,—
"There, it's of no use; my arms are giving out!"
Freddy Jackson held out a few moments longer, then dropped his oar also, with a look of utter hopelessness.
