CHAPTER XXV
THE LAST LAP
Half an hour later we were awake again, shivering and with chattering teeth. The wind was rising and rustling in the canopy of leaves over our heads. It was dark and bitterly cold.
“I’m going to do something,” I announced. “We may have rain. I’ll build a shelter.”
The oak saplings offered an ideal material for an arbor, although the clasp-knife did not bite readily through their tough fibers. Jointly we interlaced the crowns of six or seven stout saplings, growing in a circle, and twisted long branches in and out of the stems. We made a small but dense roof. The floor we covered with small twigs and leaves to the depth of two or three inches.
The exertion made the blood course through our veins again. Before we had finished, it was day.
The wind had increased to a gale, which shrieked and roared and rustled among the foliage, sending occasional eddies even into our hiding-place. It kept the rain off, which threatened now and again during the forenoon. There were no mosquitoes. I do not think there ever are any among oaks.
Several excursions to the river bank, in couples or singly, one of us always remaining in the arbor, warmed us a little when we had got chilled to the bone. The river path, and the belt of scattered bushes, remained deserted all day. But we observed a considerable amount of river traffic. Long strings of barges, mostly empty, were being towed upstream by powerful tugs.
Tynsdale scouted toward the west, away from the river, and reported a farm some distance from our hiding-place in that direction, and the existence of a pond and a belt of marsh-land behind the thicket.
We slept in snatches of minutes, until the cold awoke us again, and again sent us dancing or scouting about. It was the most miserable camp we had yet experienced, but the safest, and the one where we were the least thirsty. There was more water about us than was altogether desirable, we thought at the time. Twenty-four hours later, looking back, we altered our opinion.