Then had come a ray of sunshine, and the four Rovers had ventured forth that afternoon thinking to have a pleasant little outing. But the sunshine had quickly passed, and now they found themselves out in a furious storm and face to face with a situation that was as appalling as it was dangerous.
CHAPTER III
TO THE RESCUE
"Don't leave us! Don't leave us!" shouted the man in the middle of the river, as he saw Jack and the others crawling over the rocky shore up the stream.
"We're not going to leave you," answered the young captain of the Colby Hall cadets. "We are going to try to get to that tree and move it. Keep up your courage."
"Oh, please hurry!" screamed the boy in the stream. "The water is getting higher every minute, and it's flying right into our faces!"
"We'll do what we can," shouted back Randy, and the others added similar words of encouragement.
It was no easy task for the Rovers to make their way over the wet rocks, covered here and there with slippery grass and weeds. More than once one or another went down, and Fred gave his left elbow a bump, while his cousin Andy received a scraping of the shins.
Fortunately, the downpour of rain was abating, so that they had a chance to dash the water from their caps and faces and see better what they were trying to do. They soon reached the last of the rocks jutting out from the shore, and here the four came again to a halt to view the situation.