“A little help wouldn’t go amiss,” Pat admitted, shouting at the top of his lungs in order that he might be heard above the whistling of the storm.
“I wonder if we’ll ever be able to put the tents up again?” Jack shouted. “They are flapping and snapping like musketry out there on the rocks. I hope they won’t blow away entirely.”
Pat gazed anxiously in the direction indicated, but could only see pieces of canvas bellying up in the wind, mounting upward like balloons at times, then falling back to earth when a short lull came in the storm.
“Why,” he cried, in a moment, “where’s Jimmie? I thought I saw him here a moment ago. Have you seen him?”
“Not since the storm,” panted Jack.
“He may have been smothered in his tent,” Pat shouted. “You hold on here while I go and look him up.”
“Be sure that you keep close to the ground,” warned Jack. “If you don’t you’ll be blown away.”
It was not at all difficult for the lad to reach the flapping tents, for the wind generously assisted him in the journey. Only that he crept on his hands and knees he would have been tossed against the wall where the tents lay.
Struggling with the tearing canvas, bracing himself against the face of the cliff, the boy looked over the ruined tents but found no indication of the presence of the boy he sought, either dead or alive. Then he felt along the angle of the foot of the rise with no better success.
“He’s not there,” he reported, crawling back to Jack, now braced tenaciously with his toes and elbows digging into the soil above the rock.