CHAPTER XVI
CLOUDBURST ON GREYLOCK
SKINNY says that if they would let him run the weather he wouldn't have it rain daytimes during vacation. All of us Boy Scouts feel that way, too, because, what's the use? The days are made for boys to have fun in and the nights are made to sleep. So, why not have it rain nights when folks are sleeping?
Anyhow, it rained that August as we never had seen it rain before and never want to see it again. It began in the night, all right, just like rain ought to do, but it didn't stop. When day came it seemed to take a fresh start and kept going. It rained all day long and we couldn't have any fun at all. When it came time to go to bed it quit for a spell, but it started up again before morning. It wasn't any drizzle, either. It came down in bucketfuls, until I thought the village would be washed away and that even Bob's Hill would float off.
Along about ten o'clock in the morning it let up, and pretty soon, who should come along but Skinny and Bill, barefooted and with old clothes on. They were worried about the cave, and so was I. While it was raining so hard I thought about it a lot.
You see, our cave is a little below Peck's Falls, on the bank of the brook. There are two entrances. One goes in from the top on the upper side. You first go down into a hole and then wriggle through an opening, until you come out into the real cave. We don't use that one except when we want to escape from the enemy, or something like that.
The one we use is below, right at the edge of the water, and leads straight into the real cave. The floor of the cave is even with the water at the entrance and then slopes back a little out of the wet.
Once a flood filled the cave and nearly drowned us. We should have been drowned, if Tom Chapin hadn't been with us. He dove down through the hole into the upper cave and then pulled us through after him. After that we built a dam so that it would not happen again. I told all about that once in the doings of the Band. What we were worrying about was the dam's giving way.