"She's gone!" exclaimed Toby. "The tide were risin' up and floatin' she off!"
"What shall we do?" asked Charley in dismay. "We can't get off the island without a boat!"
"'Tis a bad fix," confessed Toby. "They's no way o' gettin' off the island without the boat. I'm not knowin' rightly what to do. 'Tis the worst fix I ever were in!"
The snow was now falling heavily, driven in thick, swirling clouds by the gale. Everywhere they looked along the shore, in the vain hope that the boat may have drifted in at some other point, and eagerly they looked out into the drifting clouds of snow in the equally vain hope that it might be seen floating near enough to the shore to be recovered by some means. But nowhere was it to be seen, and the two boys, depressed by a sense of helplessness to extricate
