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"She’s there!" Bronwyn insisted "The rope!"

Then I sahat she was pointing at: not a flailing girl in the water but a fat thread of woven he up from it, barely visible in all the chaos A strand of taut brown rope extended up fro Olive must’ve been attached to the other end, unseen

We paddled to the rope and Bronwyn reeled it down, and after aabove our heads, one end of the rope knotted around her waist Her shoes had fallen off when her boat flipped, but Bronwyn had already tied Olive to the anchor line, the other end of which was resting on the seafloor If not for that, she surely would’ve been lost in the clouds by now

Olive threw her arms around Bronwyn’s neck and crowed, "You saved ht of theer yet," said Bronwyn "We still got to reach shore before nightfall, or our troubles have only just begun"

The storm had weakened some and the sea’s violent chop died down, but the idea of rowing another stroke, even in a perfectly calinable now We hadn’t made it even halfway to the mainland and already I was hopelessly exhausted My hands throbbed My arms felt heavy as tree trunks Not only that, but the endless diagonal rocking of the boat was having an undeniable effect on reenish color of the faces aroundto sound encouraging "We’ll rest and bail out the boats until the fog clears …"

"Fog like this has aIt’ll be dark in a few hours, and then we’ll have to hope we can last untilus We’ll be utterly defenseless"

"And without water," said Hugh

"Or food," added Millard

Olive raised both hands in the air and said, "I knohere it is!"

"Where what is?" said Emma

"Land I sahen I was up at the end of that rope" Olive had risen above the fog, she explained, and briefly caught a clear view of the rumbled Enoch "We’ve circled back on ourselves a half-dozen tiain"

"Are you certain?" Eerous What if a wind catches you, or the rope snaps?"

Olive’s face went steely "Reel ets like this, there’s no arguing," said Eirl I ever knew," Bronwyn said, then set to working She pulled the anchor out of the water and up into our boat, and with the extra length of rope it gave us we lashed together our two reain, then reeled Olive back up through the fog and into the sky