At nine o'clock all were sleeping soundly behind the tightly drawn tent flaps, and the fire was mingling its red flashes with the moonlight glow on the rippling surface of the creek.
Ten o'clock came—eleven—twelve. Not a breath of air was stirring; a dead, oppressive calm, like the sultriness of noonday, had settled down on land and water. Half an hour later the west was inky black with massed storm clouds and fleecy forerunners of the coming tempest were straying one after another across the moon.
All unconscious of impending danger the boys slept peacefully, nor did they awake until the storm was upon them in all its fury. Dazed and terrified they crouched close together, watching the jagged purple flashes that turned night into noonday, listening to the furious patter of the rain and the crashing of thunder, and shivering where the oozing drops fell in their faces from the saturated canvas.
Streams of water were trickling across the ground, and the tent was tugging, like a thing of life, to free itself from the iron stakes.
Ned groped about until he found the lantern, and with great difficulty he lit it. Nugget was trembling like a leaf, but the others were, so far, more disgusted than frightened. A possible ducking, and the loss of a night's sleep, was the most they dreaded.
But soon the presence of a real and actual danger made itself known. The wind rose to such a point of violence that it was little short of a hurricane. Trees began to go down here and there, and the passage of the gale through the forest on each shore was like the whirring flight of myriads of quail.
The tent was slightly protected by the timber on the upper point of the island; otherwise it must have yielded to the first onslaught of the storm.
"This is terrible," whispered Ned. "If it grows any worse I'm afraid we will fare badly. The tent is strained to its utmost now."
"Even the iron stakes won't hold it if the wind gets through the flaps," said Randy in a dismal tone.
They were silent for a moment, listening to the increasing fury of the gale.