— That ought to hold. What do you think.
— If the post will hold, Uncle Tom.
— Oh, the post will hold all right. I’m not so sure about the rope.
We went back to the windmill and watched it. The leg was still lifting, but not so much, the rope was holding it down. The first rain was beginning, coming in large fierce drops, almost horizontally, separate and stinging, and smacking against the side of the house as loudly as hailstones. Aunt Norah came round the corner to the edge of the porch and shouted something.
— What did you say?
She put her hands to her mouth.
— If it’s all right—
— Yes, it’s all right.
— You’d better come in — Doris and David—
— What?
— Come in.
— All right, we’re coming.
It got dark very suddenly, and as we ran along the side porch I saw a lightning-flash crawl quite slowly down behind the statue of Miles Standish, a pale lilac color, very bright, and almost as slow as if it were being drawn down with a pen. I remembered what Father said about counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder, a second to a mile, and started to count, but the crash came between the first count and the second, a terrific shingle-ripper, and so low and close that it seemed to go right over my hair. As I dived round the corner to the sheltered part of the porch at the front the rain made me shut my eyes, but I could still see the little black figure of Miles Standish with the sword stroke of light behind him. What was this about Doris and David. Uncle Tom was holding the screen door for me, but it got away from him just as I went in, and clapped back against the wall. Then he pulled it shut by main force, against the wind, which sang through it, and closed the inside door, and we were in the dining-room-and-sitting-room, where everything seemed quiet by contrast, and the lamps were lit, one of them hanging on chains over the dining-table, the other over the table at the other end of the room, with a bowl of bayberry leaves. I could hear Porper shouting to Susan upstairs. Aunt Norah was holding her spectacles in her hand and wiping the rain off her cheek.
— They’ve gone out to the boat—
— What do you mean.
— Doris and David. I tried to stop them—
— You mean in the Osprey—?
— It was David’s idea, he thought it would be nice to go out in a storm — do you think you could stop them. It isn’t safe. It’s crazy.
— When did they go.
— Five minutes ago. If you ran straight down to the Point—
— Can I go, Uncle Tom, I can run fast—
— No, Andy, you stay here.
— I’ll go down and see.
He took his raincoat from the cupboard under the stairs and went out. I wondered if he would be struck by lightning. And whether the Osprey would be struck, because of the little mast at the front. What a silly thing to do, it was just like Uncle David, he was probably drunk. I went upstairs to Susan’s room, where Susan and Porper were building a fortress in the middle of the floor with blocks and books and tin soldiers and the rockinghorse and the elephant, and the wastebasket for a tower, and helped them with it, now and then going to the front window to watch the storm, which got worse and worse. Every time the lightning came Porper shut his eyes, but he didn’t cry. The whole bay was dancing with lightning, and now and then we could see all of it, every single detail, even the white houses on Clark’s Island, in a green flash, but we couldn’t see any boats, only the water, which seemed to be nothing but whitecaps. Uncle Tom must be down at the Point now, but what could he do. How could they see him or hear him, even if they were still there. But where would they go.
It was after supper, Susan was putting Porper to bed, when he came back, soaked to the skin, and tired, and said he hadn’t been able to find them. They had gone off in the Osprey, and taken the tender with them, he could make out the mooring, but that was all. He had walked out on the long bridge as far as the draw without seeing anything, there were no lights in either direction. If they had gone out into the bay, and got caught, they might be safe enough by this time if they had got into the lagoon, by the village. Or they might have gone up through the bridge into the cove, and perhaps anchored there in the lee of the bluffs, or perhaps even beached the Osprey. In any case, he didn’t think anything more could be done. They were probably all right. What could you do, in this rain that came in sheets, and this wind like a hurricane. Though he thought the thunderstorm itself was about over, was moving out to sea.
— Do you think we ought to telephone the police.
— What could the police do. And probably they’ve cut off the telephone service.
— If they aren’t back by ten I think we ought to tell them.
— You mean send out a search party. But what could a search party do. Nobody would go out in a boat, not if he could help it. You can’t see as far as your hand.
It was after I had been sent up to bed that I heard the telephone ringing. The thunder had stopped, and the wind had gone down, but it was still raining hard. And a little later I heard voices downstairs, and the doors opening and shutting, and when I got out of bed and went to the window I saw Uncle Tom and two other men going off towards the Point with lanterns, the three lanterns noddling up and down over the drenched grass, and showing the bright yellow edges of sou’-westers. I got back into bed and listened to the hard rain on the roof, but I couldn’t go to sleep. It seemed to me that I was awake all night.
— and in the playhouse that afternoon, alone, it was hot and steamy there, and quiet, and Uncle Tom came in, and looked at me, tapping on the Gonko table with his fingers, and I could see that he was wondering if I had been crying. But I hadn’t been crying. And then he said that Sergeant Homer was at the house and wanted to ask me a few questions. Just a few questions. About how I had found them. About how I had found the Osprey in the marsh channel that morning.
— Don’t be worried, Andy. It’s just official. Just tell him what he wants to know, it won’t be long. It’s all right.
The Sergeant was sitting at the dining-room table, with his hat upside down on the floor beside him. Aunt Norah was standing by the window, she had just said something when we came in, and the Sergeant was writing it down with a pencil. She was blowing her nose.
— And your name, young man, is Andrew Cather, isn’t it?
— Yes, sir.
— You went out in your dory this morning at about five o’clock, that’s right isn’t it, and rowed up the marsh channel toward Brant Rock?
— Yes, sir.
— And you saw the tender of your uncle’s boat there, in the channel, and that led to your discovery that the Osprey had been sunk there. How much under water was the Osprey when you saw it, would you say.
— I should think about two feet.
— So that you could see everything quite clearly?
— Yes, sir.
— Was she on her side?
— A little on her port side.
— You could see quite clearly into the cockpit, you could even have got into it — but you didn’t get into it, did you, Andrew, or interfere with it in any way?
— No, sir.
— Was the door to the cabin open or shut.
— It was shut.
— You are sure of that. Did you notice whether the boat had been anchored?
— Yes, sir, the anchor had been dropped.
— Could you see anything through the portholes?
— I could see some brown cloth quite close to one of the portholes, and I knew it was my mother’s dress, the one she had on yesterday.