“That’s good news—altogether good. How long are you likely to be detained at the village?”
“Only long enough to post my letter and the manuscript—not more than half an hour at the most.”
“Very well, then. We shall want to buy all the bread and that sort of thing there is to be had over there, but we can easily do that within your half hour. We’ll start about sunrise, and if the wind favors us we’ll be back by noon or a little later, and even if we have no wind, the oars will bring us back before nightfall.”
Dunbar at once set to work to arrange and pack the drawings he wished to send by mail, and as there were titles to write and explanatory paragraphs to revise, the work occupied him until supper time. In the meanwhile the boys prepared the boat, filled the water kegs, bestowed a supply of fishing tackle, and overhauled the rigging to see that every rope was clear and every pulley in free running order.
After supper there was not a very long evening for talk around the fire, for, with an early morning start in view, they must go early to their bunks.
They all rolled themselves in their blankets about nine o’clock and soon were sleeping soundly—the boys under the shelter and Dunbar under the starry sky—for the rain had passed away—by that side of the fire which was opposite the camp hut.
Their slumber had not lasted for an hour when suddenly they were awakened by a combination of disturbances amply sufficient, as Dick afterwards said, “to waken the denizens of a cemetery.”
The very earth was swaying under them and rocking back and forth like a boat lying side on to a swell. Deep down—miles beneath the surface it seemed, there was a roar which sounded to Cal like “forty thousand loose-jointed wagons pulled by runaway horses across a rheumatic bridge.”
As the boys sprang to their feet they found difficulty in standing erect, and before they could run out of their shelter, it plunged forward and fell into the fire, where the now dried palmete leaves which constituted its roof and walls, and the resinous pine poles of its framework, instantly blazed up in a fierce, crackling flame.
“Quick!” cried Dunbar, as Larry, Dick and Cal extricated themselves from the mass, “quick—help here! Tom is entangled in the ruins.”