"Yeth, we alwayth need that. I never thhall get enough of it until after I have been dead ever and ever tho long."
"I am not sleepy, but, of course, being a leader now, I have to set a good example," said Harriet lightly.
Tommy squinted at her inquiringly, as if trying to decide whether or not it were prudent to take advantage of her now that Harriet was a leader officially. She decided to test the matter out at the first opportunity, but just now there was a matter of several hours' sleep ahead, so Tommy quickly prepared for sleep, after which, straightening out her blanket, she twisted herself up in it in a mummy roll with only the top of her tow-head and a pair of very bright little eyes observable over the top of the blanket.
Harriet waited until her companions had rolled up in their blankets; then she opened the door wide so that the ocean breeze blew in and swirled about the interior of the cabin in a miniature gale. The girls did not mind it at all. They thought it delicious. This was getting the real benefit of being at the sea shore. Harriet rolled in her blanket directly in front of the door with her head pillowed on the sill. To enter the cabin one would have to step over her. She went to sleep after lying gazing out over the sea for some time.
"What's that?" Harriet started up with a half-smothered exclamation. A report that sounded like the discharge of a gun had aroused her, or else she had been dreaming. She was not certain which it had been. The other girls were asleep, as was indicated by their regular breathing. Harriet listened intently. She had not changed her position, but her eyes were wide open, looking straight out to sea. Nothing unusual was found there. She was about to close her eyes again when a peculiar creaking sound greeted her ears. Harriet knew instantly the meaning of the sound. It came from the straining of ropes on a sailboat.
Unrolling from the blanket and hastily dressing, the Meadow-Brook Girl crawled out to the bar, wishing to make her observations unseen by any one else. Now she saw it again, that same filmy cloud in the darkness, towering up in the air, moving almost phantom-like into the bay to the south of the cabin on Lonesome Bar.
"It's a boat. I believe it is the same one I saw in there before. But I can't be sure of that. I don't know boats well enough; then, again, the night is too dark to make certain. I don't know that it would be anything of importance if a boat were to run in here to anchor for the night. That evidently is what they propose doing," she thought.
That Harriet's surmise was correct was evidenced a few moments later when the boat's anchor splashed into the waters of the bay and the anchor chain rattled through the hawse hole. Harriet tried to get a clear idea of what the boat itself looked like, but was unable to do so on account of the darkness. Now the creak of oars was borne faintly to her ears; the sound ceased abruptly, then was taken up again.
"They are putting a boat ashore!" muttered Harriet, who was now sitting on the sand, her hair streaming over her shoulder in the fresh, salty breeze. "I hope to goodness none of them comes out here. The girls would be terribly frightened if they knew about this. I don't believe I shall tell them, unless—"
Harriet paused suddenly as the sound of men's voices was heard somewhere toward the land end of the bar. She walked around to the rear of the cabin, peering shoreward. She made out faintly the figures of two men coming down the bar. They were carrying something between them—something that seemed to be heavy and burdensome, for the men were staggering under its weight.