If only one of them should catch the car the most glancing of blows, it would be thrown into the sea beyond like a discarded toy.
Tom and Lena were no longer acting as a father and mother should act: they prowled about him like bobcats around a porcupine.
It reached them just as they leapt over the hump between causeway and island, catching the tail of the car to thrust it sideways and hoping, maybe, if it had sense and feelings this storm, to clutch it in its fist.
It was as calm as a mill pond half-an-hour ago.