“Wish the boys had stopped to help us,” wailed Grace.
“And let their own stores get all wet–eh?” cried Wyn. “For shame! Come on, girls. To the tent!”
There was a pile of canvas which had been dropped here by the bateau men on their way to Gannet Island that forenoon. There were stakes and poles with the canvas, and the girls had practised putting up the shelter and striking it for some weeks in Wyn’s back yard.
They were not so clumsy at this work, therefore; but it did seem, because they were in a hurry, that everything went wrong.
Mina pounded her thumb with a stake-mallet, and the ridge pole fell once and struck Grace on the side of the head. Poor Grace was always unfortunate.
“Oh, dear me! I wish I was home!” wailed the big girl. “And ouch! it’s going to thunder and lightning just awful!”
“Now, keep at work!” admonished their captain. “Fasten those pegs down well, Frankie,” she added, to the girl, who had taken the mallet. “Never mind crying over your poor thumb, Mina. Wait till the tent’s up and all our things brought up from the canoes.”
“Here come the first drops, girls!” shrieked Frankie.
Drops! It was a deluge! It came across the lake in a perfect wall of water, shutting out their view of Gannet Island and everything else.
The girls scuttled for the canoes, emptied them, turned the boats keel upward, and then retreated to the big tent, Wyn even dragging the canvas of the cook tent inside to keep it from becoming saturated.