Meanwhile, there was a panic on the Point of Pines. In the middle of the peaceful dinner party two rowboats tied together came floating in toward the shore. The boys waded out and brought them up on the beach.
“Look,” cried Hinpoha, picking up something that lay in the bottom of one of them. It was a battered tan khaki hat with the frayed cord hanging down over one side and a picture of a Kewpie drawn on the big button in front. There was no mistaking it. It was Katherine’s hat.
Migwan screamed. “They’re drowned! They’ve 207 gone out in boats and upset! That’s why they’re not here. Oh, what will we do?”
“Take it easy,” said Sahwah soothingly. “They haven’t upset. There isn’t a speck of water in the boats. They’ve simply floated off and left the folks somewhere. What were the Hares doing out in boats, anyway?” she mused. “But if they’re along the shore here somewhere we ought to go and look for them. Maybe we missed directions by not keeping to the beach. That must be it. They probably told us about the boats in a later note that we didn’t get.”
With an air of relief they finished their dinner and then piled into the boats and started coasting along the shore, looking for the Hares.
“This is getting to be a real hare and hound chase,” observed Hinpoha, as they proceeded slowly, looking into every little cove and inlet. Soon they rounded the last point and were spied by the anxious watchers in the lighthouse, who waved their towels and shrieked at the tops of their voices.
The Hounds got the surprise of their lives when they heard that hail and looking up saw the Hares perched up in the lighthouse, “just exactly like crows on a telephone pole,” said Sahwah, telling Aunt Clara about it later.
The stranded Hares were taken ashore under a running fire of pleasantry about their plight, and were told moral stories about people who tried to 208 play jokes on others and got the worst of it themselves, and Sahwah advised them gravely never to go out in a rowboat that wouldn’t stand without hitching, and so on and so forth until the poor Hares did not know which way to turn.
So the members of the chase went homeward, hunters and hunted side by side, laughing at the events of the day and agreeing that the chief charm of nearly all their expeditions lay in the fact that they never turned out the way they had expected them to.
“Good gracious, Slim, you aren’t hungry again?” said Sahwah, as Slim, stooping among the leaves, brought up a bunch of bright blue berries and started to put them all into his mouth at once.