"Speak more quietly, please," warned Harriet. "Jane, I wish you would come up here. No; I'm not going to take you far. I want you within reach of the boat."
"Do you see anything of the boys, Harriet?" asked Miss Elting.
"No, but I hear them occasionally. They are quite a distance ahead, traveling fast, and ought to be back long before dark."
Jane lost no time in hurrying to the lower end of the creek in order to join her friend. Harriet lay on the rocks, at a point where she could not see the water, and there Jane joined her.
"What I want you to do," Harriet explained in whispers, at the same time on the alert for sound or sign of the boys, "is to stay here, or not far from here, so that you can warn the girls in case I signal by making a cawing noise like a crow. I don't want the girls to make too much noise, for it would spoil our fun if the boys should discover our hiding place."
"But how am I going to get back if I have to do so in a hurry?"
"Can you go down a rope?"
"Show me the rope that I can't go down," boasted Jane.
"How about this one?" smiled Harriet, producing a coil of quarter inch manila rope.
"Well, it's small, but I'll try it. Where do you wish me to climb?"