“Oh, let’s go a little farther. I like it when the canoe tumbles about,” declared reckless Bess.
Nan knew that if the wind held at its present point it would be more aid to them in running back than while they were on this present tack, so she did not insist upon turning about immediately. What she did not know was, that the recurrent flaws in the wind foretold a sudden change in its direction.
There were plenty of other pleasure boats about them at first; and as Bess pointed out, Walter Mason’s Bargain Rush had passed the canoe, going out. What the two chums did not notice, however, was that these other boats, including the Bargain Rush, soon made for the shore.
The fishing boats from Freeling were driving in toward the inlet, too. Wise boatmen saw the promise of “dirty weather.” Not so Nan and Bess. The tang of the spray on their lips, the wind blowing their braids and freshening the roses in their cheeks, the caress of it on their bare arms and necks, the excitement of sitting in the pitching canoe—all delighted and charmed the girls.
They were soon far from all other boats, the canoe was scuttling over the choppy waves like a quail running to cover, the bellying sail actually hiding from their eyes the threatening clouds that were piling up in the east and south.
Suddenly the wind died. Their sail hung flabbily from the pole. Nan began to look anxiously about.
“If we have to paddle clear back to the boathouse,” she began, when Bess suddenly gasped:
“Oh, Nan! Look there!”
Nan gazed as her chum pointed “sou’east.” A mass of slate-colored clouds seemed to reach from the apex of the heavenly arch to the lead-colored water. Along the lower edge of this curtain of cloud ran a white line, like the bared teeth of a wolf!
Nan was for the moment speechless. She had never seen such alarming clouds. She and Bess had yet to see a storm on the Great Lakes. Nothing like this approach of wind and rain had ever been imagined by the two girls.