I SAW SOMEONE SITTING AT THE END OF THE SPRINGBOARD.
As long as I knew I couldn’t sleep I put my jacket on again because I hate to be lying down when I can’t sleep, just the same as I don’t like to be walking around when I’m sleepy. I was wondering what the scouts in my patrol had been thinking about Warde and me. Because now that I knew no ’phone message had been received they must have thought it was funny for us to stay away. I’m patrol leader and I’m supposed to be a shining example. I guess I’m not so very shiny, but Warde is a good example; he’s a whole arithmetic.
So I put my jacket on again and went outside. It was pretty dark. Most always I’m dead to the world at that time of night, and it seemed spooky to be out when the whole camp was sleeping. Christopher, but it was still. There was a kind of a mist and it seemed to change everything; it got me all mixed up. I couldn’t tell where the shore of the lake was; it made the land and the lake sort of the same.
Until then I never knew that there were a lot of things in camp that make a noise, I mean the boats knocking against the landing and the weather-vane creaking, and things like that. Because you don’t hear them in the daytime, or any time when there are other sounds. But believe me, they gave me the creeps that night. Where I stood I could hardly see the cabins, the mist was getting so thick. I couldn’t see the tents at all. I just about knew where the lake began.
All of a sudden I saw something terrible. I saw a thing walking. It was the same color as the mist, I could only just see it. I couldn’t see that it had any legs, it just kind of moved, it was the same all the way down to the ground. I couldn’t stir I was so frightened.
I just stood where I was and, gee, I admit that my heart was thumping. I heard the chains on the boats clanking and that made me shiver. Lots of times I’d heard them before, but they sounded spooky that night.
The thing kept going and got to the lake and kept right on walking over the lake—walked right out over the lake. A little way out it kind of faded away in the mist. Then I didn’t see it any more. I just stood there, I couldn’t move....
CHAPTER XXIX
EYES TO SEE AND EARS TO HEAR
Then all of a sudden I made up my mind I wouldn’t be scared. I walked right toward where I had seen the thing, because I wanted to prove to myself that I hadn’t seen anything at all.
Then, in a minute, I had to laugh to myself. I came to the end of the narrow board-walk that is built out to deep water where the diving board is. Out at the end of the springboard I could hear a voice, very low. I walked right out along the boards, making a lot of noise so as to prove that there wasn’t anything spooky at all.