“It’s too windy to do anything today,” said Hinpoha crossly, retiring to the shelter of a wide trunk and holding her hands to her smarting face. Several stinging blows from a branch set with needles had dampened her enthusiasm for balsam pillows.
Some of the others stuck it out until they had as much as they wanted, and after an hour or more of strenuous labor Sandhelo was finally laden with his fragrant burden and the expedition started back.
Then they began to have their first real experience with wind. Going into the woods it had been been at their backs and they thought it great fun to be shoved along and to lean back against it like a 228 supporting hand, but going against it was an entirely different matter. It was all they could do to stand on their feet and at times they simply could not move an inch forward. The roaring in the treetops seemed full of menace, and branches began to fall around them. Not far away a whole tree went down with a sounding crash.
“We’re all going to be killed!” cried Gladys hysterically, as they huddled together at the sound of the falling tree. A wild blast that rang like the scream of an enraged beast came like an answer to her words, and a sapling maple snapped off like a toothpick. Sandhelo snorted with fear and began to kick out.
“We must get out of these woods as fast as we can,” said the Captain, to whom the others had all turned for advice.
“You don’t see any of us lingering to admire the scenery, do you?” asked Katherine drily.
Terrified almost out of their senses and expecting every minute to have a tree fall on them, they made their way toward the shore and came out spent and exhausted and too breathless to talk. But glad as they were to get out of the woods in safety, they were filled with dismay when they looked at the lake. To their excited eyes the waves, black as the sky above them, seemed mountain high.
“They’ll never come for us in the launch in that,” 229 said Katherine after a few moments’ silent gazing, voicing the fears of the others.
“We should never have started out on a day like this,” said Hinpoha. “Why did you insist so on our coming, Gladys?”
“Well,” Gladys defended herself, “Katherine said there was enough blue to patch the Dutchman’s breeches and—”