"Almost there!"
His words gave all of them new courage, and they redoubled their efforts. In a short while the force of the wind seemed to be decreasing. They were now gaining the shelter of the cliff. The snow had not collected so heavily on the surface of the ice, and they made better progress. In a few minutes they had skated into an area of comparative calm. They could still hear the screaming of the wind, and when they looked back the entire lake was an inferno of swirling snow, but in the shelter of the steep rocks they were protected from the full fury of the blizzard.
"Some storm!" grunted Chet, as he skated slowly to the base of the cliff and sat down on a frost-encrusted boulder.
"I'll say it is," agreed Jerry Gilroy, following Chet's example.
The Hardy boys leaned against the rocks. They were safe enough in this shelter unless the wind changed completely about, which was unlikely. With the approach of darkness it was growing colder, but all the boys were warmly clad and they had few fears on that score. Their chief worry was lest the storm should not die down in time to permit of their return to Bayport that night, because they knew their people would be worrying about them.
"I see where mother won't let me go skating again," declared Chet. "She's always afraid I'll get drowned or lost or something, and now she'll get such a scare that I'll never get out again."
"Aunt Gertrude will crow over this for a month," Joe put in. "She said before we started that we'd be sure to get into some kind of a mess."
"Well, we'll just have to wait here until the storm blows over, that's all," said Frank philosophically. "Even if it does get dark we can follow the river all right and get home easily enough. Perhaps the storm won't last very long."
The boys settled themselves down to wait in the lee of the high black rocks until the fury of the blizzard should have diminished. There seemed to be no indication that the storm was dying down and they resigned themselves to a wait of at least an hour. Frank scouted around in search of firewood, planning to light a blaze, but any wood there may have been along the shore had long since been snowed under and he had to give up the attempt.
While the boys are thus marooned by the storm in the shelter of the cliff it might be best to introduce them to new readers of this series.