The Hotel Under the Sand Read Online Free Page A

just kept thinking of how nicely it would keep the winter rain out.
Besides
, she thought,
if it’s heavy, it will be hard for the wind to blow it away
.
    So at last Emma set it down by her fire. Night was falling fast, and the smiling moon was already bright. She had just enough time to collect driftwood for her fire and dig a few clams for her supper before it got dark. The clams did taste a lot better when they were baked in the coals, but Emma was so tired she didn’t care very much. She just wanted to sleep. So, as soon as she had built up the fire, she crawled under the rowboat, curled up, and closed her eyes.
    BOOM!
    It seemed only a second or so later that Emma was startled awake by wind roaring as loud as a freight train. She looked out from under the rowboat and saw no moon, no stars, but only her little fire fanned to hot flames by the gust. Sand hissed by, piling up against the fence she had worked so hard to build, forming hills that rose and rose and then collapsed, rushing on over the face of the dune. Her hair whipped about her face, and the sand stung her skin.
    Emma ducked back under the rowboat, trying very hard to remain calm.
    “As long as I stay in here where I can breathe, I’ll be safe,” she told herself. “There’s no use in running out into the night and getting lost.”
    So she curled up again, and lay there listening to the sand scouring away at the bottom of the rowboat. But after a while it became dark and hot and stuffy, and Emma realized that the rowboat was being buried by the blowing sand. “Oh, no!” she cried, and got on her hands and knees and pushed upward, bracing her back against the boat.
    The rowboat lifted clear of the sand, and cool air came in again. But more sand came blowing in underneath, faster and faster, and it buried her hands and feet. She lifted them free, shaking off the sand. The wind was screaming now, so loud she couldn’t even hear the beating of her own heart. Emma realized that if she lifted the boat too high, even as big and heavy as it was, the wind might snatch it away. She was very scared, but she was even more angry.
    “No!” she cried. “I didn’t live through one storm just so another one could get me!”
    She clung tightly to the gunwales of the boat, stubbornly pushing it up every time the sand grew too high. She had to keep at it for what seemed like hours, and she was getting very tired, when suddenly someone was there under the boat with her.
    “Hold on, Miss Emma!” shouted Winston. He grabbed hold of the gunwale too, and lifted the boat clear of another few inches of sand. “Be resolute!”
    “What does
resolute
mean?” Emma shouted back.
    “It means—you won’t give up!” said Winston.
    “Then I
will be
resolute!” said Emma fiercely, and she pushed against the howling wind with all her strength.
    They fought the storm for three whole hours, and it got so loud that they couldn’t speak to each other. Emma found it strange that she was alone in the dark with a ghost, but not frightened of him at all.
    After a long, long time she noticed that the wind seemed to be dropping at last, and a little gray light could be seen coming in from outside. It seemed to have been a few minutes since they had had to push the boat free of the sand.
    “I think you might be safe now, Miss Emma,” said Winston. His voice had a funny echoing quality, because Emma’s ears were still ringing from the noise of the gale.
    “Let’s stand up, and lift the boat with us,” said Emma. “That way we can see what’s going on without getting sand blown in our eyes.”
    So they stood together, and in the gray light of dawn saw that they were still standing in the oasis of dune grass and blackberry bushes. But it was not in a valley anymore; it was on the edge of a steep-sided bluff of sand.
    Suddenly the wind came blustering straight at them. It plucked the boat off their shoulders as though it weighed no more than a straw hat, and tumbled it away