"Found them in the river," he explained. "Had drifted into a cove. So heavy I couldn't carry more than one at a time. The other packs are open and the stuff spread all over the cove. I gathered it up as well as I could. You'll have to give me a rope to tie the things up, or else bring them back in wads."
"In the river?" cried the girls in chorus.
"Well, I swum!" muttered Janus, pausing from his labors long enough to consult his whiskers. "Things are moving kind of fast."
"Oh, this is nothing, nothing at all," laughed Crazy Jane. "You will think things are moving after you have been out with the Meadow-Brook Girls for a time. Things always do move when we are around. Look out that they don't move so fast as to sweep you with them. My! but this is a heavy pack."
The girls had taken the wet pack from Jim and were dragging it up the bluff. Janus tied this and two other packs on the back of one horse, then began making ready for doing the game with the other animal. By the time he was ready, Jim had returned with still another wet bundle of equipment.
"Our clotheth are in that pack!" wailed Tommy, as she surveyed the bedraggled outfit. "What thhall we do?"
"Keep quiet and go on up to camp," said Margery severely.
"Come, come, girls!" urged Miss Elting, a little irritated. She had not yet quite recovered from the shock of Harriet's disaster. How great a shock this had been her charges had not fully realized.
The heaviest packs were soon loaded on the horses, after which Janus, leading one animal, went ahead to pilot them to the spot chosen for a temporary camp. Nearly half an hour was consumed in finding their way there. The night was dark and many obstacles in the shape of rocks and fallen trees and stumps were found in their path, and the guide's call that they had arrived was the most welcome information the girls had received in all that eventful day's journey.
"Here, Jim, unload these packs while I gather the wood for a fire, so that we can see what we are doing."