“Chick!” yelled Don, putting speed to his flying feet.
The flares died. In a glare of light the larger figure broke free from the smaller as they came to the boarding.
The lightning died out, leaving the sky a black, thunder-echoing void. The earth beneath was cloaked in the pall. With blinded eyes Don stopped, fearing to crash into Garry just ahead of him.
They were too far away to see, in that masking blackness, what had happened.
The last light had shown the smaller figure reeling backward, on the edge of the planks, it seemed.
There was nothing to do! To run forward might mean being precipitated into the marshy channels.
They waited for the next flash.
With the perversity of storms, the lightning seemed exhausted for a long, mind-torturing moment. When next it flared up, two anxious hearts seemed to drop like leaden weights from two tight throats where they had striven to constrict the breath.
Bare and silent lay the narrow footway across the marsh.
Dark and sinister the water moiled in the channels beneath it.