There wasn’t much room to stir around without getting the beds wet, but as soon as the Norms could control their unseeming joy, Miss Mackin tried to find a few spots. This was done by pushing the beds into still more compact quarters, until Corene suggested they stand them on end and sleep standing up.
“Do you mean to tell us your tent is gone?” demanded Miss Mackey, when her third shower—the drenched Norms—squatted down to “rip off some water-soaked garments.”
“We do. Exactly that. It blew away and we didn’t even have time to blow a kiss to it,” declared Bubbles.
“Where are the others?”
“At the bungalow. They ventured in, we hope they’ll get out all right, but we wouldn’t try it. Imagine that prim old couple having such a delightful surprise.”
“I’m so tired I can sleep beautifully on the floor,” declared another of the storm victims. “And please don’t let us demoralize your squad, Mackey. They’ll be all cross babies in the morning.” Their own scare was then recounted and the surprise party made doubly welcome, when everyone insisted they could “get to sleep now,” that there was so much “lovely company around.”
Blankets were easily spared from the cots as the night had not cooled off too suddenly, and the Norms, being all around sportswomen, didn’t find the pine boards and good blankets such a poor sort of bunk after all, so sleep was wooed and won finally.
They must have realized the morning would bring to them some strenuous duties, for what about reclaiming Camp Norm?
[CHAPTER XIII—DANGER SIGNALS]
Daylight showed what havoc the storm had wrought. The lake front was strewn with craft washed in by the swelled waters; there were sailboats bottom side up, canvas carried from one end of the lake to the other, rowboats torn from their docks where strong ropes over stronger posts were thought to hold them securely; in fact the storm had been a record-breaker and the new record was one of considerable devastation.