"Wake Nicodemus!" laughed Poke.
And then they all burst forth again:
"Wake Nicodemus to-day!"
The chasing clouds gathered, until the sky was almost completely overcast. The moon would not rise till late; it became dark rapidly. But as the gloom of night thickened on land and sea, a little golden flame shot up on the shore, and grew large and bright as the surrounding shadows became more dense.
It was the flame of the boys' camp-ire, which they kindled on the seaward side of the dunes, and fed with rubbish from the high-water mark of the recent storm. Later tides had not then reached it, and plenty of it was dry enough to burn.
PERCE AND THE TWINS ON THEIR WAY TO THE BEACH.
Chips and old shingles, bleached sea-weed, broken planks, strips and slabs from saw-mills on some far-away river, and other refuse, littered the strand,—here, a broken lobster-pot which the rolling waves had washed ashore, and there, a ship's fender, worn smooth, with a fragment of rope still held in the auger-hole by its knotted end.
Such of this fuel as best suited their immediate purpose the boys gathered for their fire; and Olly, in his wave-tossed boat, could see their agile figures running to and fro in the light of the flames.