Bess repeated this exclamation over and over again, until Wyn thought she should shriek in nervous despair. She realized quite fully that their chance for life was very slim indeed; but moaning and groaning about it would not benefit them or change the situation in the slightest degree.
Wyn kept her head and saved her breath for work. She raised up now and then, breast high in the water, and tried to scan the shore.
Suddenly the sun revealed Green Knoll Camp to her–bathing the little hillock, with the tents upon it, in the full strength of his rays. But it was quite two miles away.
Wyn could see no moving figures upon the knoll. Nor could her friends see her and Bess struggling in the water at that distance. If their overset had not been sighted, Mrs. Havel and the four other members of the Go-Ahead Club would not be aware of their peril.
And, Wyn believed, the swamping of the canoes could only have been observed through a glass. Had anybody along shore been watching the two canoes as the squall struck the craft and overset them?
In that possibility, she thought, lay their only hope of rescue.
CHAPTER XIV
THE REPULSE
As the squall threatened in the northwest, it had been observed by many on the shores of Lake Honotonka–and many on the lake itself, as well. Sailing craft had run for havens. The lake could be nasty at times and there might be more than a capful of wind in the black cloud that spread so quickly over a sky that had–an hour before–been of azure.
Had the two girls from Green Knoll Camp been observed by the watermen as they embarked in their canoes at Meade’s Forge, they might have been warned against venturing far from the shore in those cockleshells. But Wynifred and Bessie had not been observed, so were not warned.