CHAPTER XXVII.
A HEAVY STORM.
On Sunday of the week the boys remained about the camp, doing very little of anything. Early in the morning Pickles took Boxy with him and showed him how to spear fish through a hole in the ice. The fish made an excellent dinner.
Toward evening it began to cloud and blow up from the northwest. Half an hour later it was snowing furiously.
“This is going to be a storm, and no mistake,” said Jack, as he went out toward the lake shore to take a look around. “It is a good thing we have plenty of meat and other stuff on hand.”
“Do you think we will be snowed in?” asked Boxy.
“I do, and it may last for several days. The best thing we can do is to gather together all the firewood we can and stack it up just outside of the hut. Then when the snow gets too deep we can build a snow-hut and have the campfire inside.”
Jack’s suggestion was followed out, and by bedtime they had a pile of wood stacked against the hut that was nearly as high as the hut itself. The oven was rebuilt closer than ever to the doorway, and a projecting top was built over the latter, so that the snow might not drift too rapidly into the interior of the hut.
Nothing had been seen or heard of Pete Sully and his companions, and all of the boys were inclined to believe that the bully and his followers had been forced to return to Rudskill.
Despite the fact that the snow was coming down thickly, the wind increased in violence until, as Pickles put it, “dar was about de nearest approach to a blizzard wot could well strike dat paht ob de country.”
The whistling of the wind through the trees was music to the boys’ ears, however, and after building up the fire in the best manner they could devise, they rolled themselves in their blankets, and gave themselves up to their dreams.