CHAPTER XIV
TELLS ABOUT THE STORM ON BLACK LAKE
One thing I have to admit, and that is that Mr. Ellsworth helped me a lot with this chapter and the next one too. But just the same both of them are by me, all right.
It's a funny thing, but all that night I was dreaming about that canoe with the two fellows in it. I could hear them paddling just as clear as could be, only when I woke up before daylight, I knew it was just the sound of rain on the roof of our patrol cabin. It was dripping into the rain ditch, I guess.
Pretty soon I went to sleep again, and I could see Skinny standing in front of me and his eyes were staring and his face was all white and there was some blood on it and he said, "I want to be a Silver Fox, because my father stole a lot of silver; so haven't I got a right to be?" I tried to answer him, but there was a loud noise and he couldn't hear and then, all of a sudden, I woke up and I knew the noise was thunder and Skinny wasn't there at all. Anyway, it made me feel kind of creepy and I was glad when I saw him at breakfast.
All that morning it rained and most of the scouts stayed in their tents and cabins. Some of them played basketball in the pavilion. Three fellows from the Boston troop went out fishing, but they had to come in it was raining so hard.
Before dinnertime, Uncle Jeb called some of us to move the mess boards into the pavilion, because it was beginning to blow from the east and the awnings and thatch roofs over the mess boards didn't keep the rain off, because it blew sideways. Out on the lake the water was churning up rough with little white caps. Jiminy, I never saw it like that before.
It was so dark and rainy that a fellow couldn't read even; anyway I couldn't because, oh, I don't know, I felt queer kind of. A lot of us sat on the wide porch of the pavilion—the side facing the lake. It was wide enough so the rain didn't come in and wet us as long as we stayed way back near the windows. We sat in a long row with our chairs tilted back. It was nice there.
Somebody said, "That spring-board looks lonely sticking out into the lake; look how the drops jump off it, just like fellows diving."
"Not much of a day for the race," Doc Carson said.