CHAPTER III
Nothing happened the rest of the night. Whatever it was that had been prowling around the hotel didn’t prowl any more. By daylight it all seemed like a joke. But it hadn’t been any joke in the dark, I can tell you.
The cool air of that mountain lake made us hungry enough to eat the blankets off the bed, but Mark said that wouldn’t be fair to Mr. Ames. He said no hotel proprietor liked to have his boarders eat the blankets except as a last resort. We built a fire in the big fireplace in the dining-room and it wasn’t two minutes before we had coffee brewing and bacon frizzling. Binney, who was considerable of a cook, was fixing up some biscuits. So, you see, we didn’t really need the blankets, after all.
“What’ll we do to-day?” says I.
“F-fix the boats,” says Mark. “Got to have the n-navy in shape. Can’t tell when war’ll b-bust out, and we can’t have an enemy landin’ on our coast. I calc’late we better have two dreadnoughts in tip-top fightin’ condition.”
We all went over to the boat-house. In it were a dozen clinker-bottomed rowboats, a couple of flat bottoms, and, bottom-up on two saw-horses, was the prettiest cedar canoe you ever saw.
“T-torpedo-boat destroyer,” says Mark. “Have that to g-guard the fishin’ fleet and carry messages.”
We went at it like nailers. Anybody who thinks it isn’t some job to fix up a boat so it won’t leak just wants to try it once. We painted and calked and messed around all day, and then had only two boats in shape—not counting the canoe. We went at that first and gave it a thick coat of paint.
“May need it any m-minute,” says Mark. “Best to be on the safe side.”
At noon we knocked off and did a good business-like job of eating. We ate so much it made us sleepy, so we strung out under a tree to take a little nap. I woke up all of a sudden with the queerest feeling! It was just as if somebody had been bending over, looking at me close and I had felt his breath in my face. I jumped up and looked all around me. Not a thing was in sight. I happened to look down at the grass, and right under my eyes a couple of blades moved, first one and then the other. You’ve seen grass straighten up after you’ve stepped on it. Well, that’s just how this grass acted—exactly as if somebody had stepped there a minute before.