THE wave receded as suddenly as it came. The boys sprang up in a terrible fright, and indeed there are few men who in their place would not have been frightened. The shock of the cold water was enough to startle the strongest nerves, and as the boys rushed to the door of the tent, in a blind race for life, they fully believed that their last hour had come. Before they could get out of the tent, a second wave swept up and rose above their knees. With wild cries of terror the two younger boys caught hold of Tom, and, losing their footing, dragged him down. Harry caught at Tom impulsively, with a vague idea of saving him from drowning, but the only result of his effort was that he went down with the rest. Fortunately the wave receded before the boys had time to drown, and left them struggling in a heap on the wet sand. There was no return of the water, and in a few moments the boys were outside of the tent and on the top of the bluff above the river.
“It must have been a tidal wave,” said Jim. “Oh, I’d give anything if I was home! The water will come up again, and we’ll all be drowned!”
“It was the swell of a steamboat,” said Tom. “There’s the boat now, just going around that point.”
“You’re right,” said Harry. “It was nothing but the swell of the night-boat. What precious fools we were not to think of it before! To-morrow night we’ll pitch the tent about a thousand feet above the water.”
“Then there’ll be a water-spout or something,” said Jim. “We’re bound to get wet whatever we do. We only started yesterday, and here we’ve been wet through three times.”
“And Harry has been wet four times, counting the time he jumped in the Harlem for me,” added Joe.
“It won’t do to stand here and talk about it,” said Tom. “We’ve got to have a fire or we’ll freeze to death. Look at the way Joe’s teeth are chattering. The blankets and clothes are all wet, and the sooner we dry them the sooner we’ll get warm.”
THE BOYS BUILT A ROARING FIRE ON A LARGE FLAT ROCK.