They awoke the next morning with the crash of the surf in their ears, a northeasterly gale blowing around the side of the hill and a leaden, cloudy sky overhead. The Crystal Spring was rocking to and fro at the mouth of the river and Jack viewed her anxiously as he dressed shiveringly in the tent. Hal arose rather pale and heavy-eyed, but not much the worse for his over-indulgence in baked clams, and viewed the depressing outlook distastefully. But after a hearty breakfast, which they had to eat inside the tent because of the wind, they all felt more cheerful. Hal was for going back to Greenhaven, but Jack refused to make the trip.

“Look at that sea, Hal,” he said. “The launch wouldn’t do a thing but fill up with water by the time we’d made the point there. And as for the Crystal Spring, well, I guess she’d make harbor finally, but she’s no heavy weather boat and I don’t fancy trying to sail her today. Maybe it’ll clear up by afternoon.”

“What can we do here, though?” asked Hal dismally.

“Dig,” replied Bee. “It’s a dandy day for digging; cool and without any glare to hurt your eyes. We can get a lot done today.”

“We can, can we? Well, I don’t intend to freeze to death out there,” replied Hal rebelliously. “I’m sick of digging, anyway.”

“You’ll be lot warmer digging than you will sitting here,” laughed Jack. “Come on and get up an appetite for dinner, Hal.”

But Hal refused and they left him hugging the fire, with a blanket over his shoulders. Jack took the pick and Bee seized a shovel and they made the dirt fly. It was really the only way to keep warm, as Jack had said. They were just finishing the first trench when Hal joined them.

“A fellow could freeze to death up there,” he muttered, picking up the second shovel. “What’ll I do, Bee?”

After that the work went merrily and Hal soon forgot his ill-temper. They finished the second trench by noon and then Bee suggested having a swim. And a glorious battle with the breakers they had! To dive through a six-foot comber and ride back to the beach on the crest of another is rare sport and splendidly conducive to the cultivation of appetites. At dinner even Hal agreed that so far they had had a bully time and he said no more about returning to Greenhaven that day. They went back to digging about two and managed to excavate most of the third trench before the wind, which was growing harder and harder every hour, drove them back to shelter. They saw to the guy-ropes and pegs, as Jack pointed out that it wasn’t pleasant to have your tent blown down on top of you; gathered a new store of wood and retired to their inside, watching the cloud-wrack go sailing overhead and the waves dashing into spray against Toller’s Rock. A sea-going tug passed a mile out, making hard weather and shipping water at every plunge. They watched her until she had rolled herself out of sight behind the spray-drenched headland. By four o’clock the wind was little short of a young hurricane, as Jack expressed it, and the tent was rocking and swaying. The wind rushed under the flaps and inflated the canvas until it threatened to sail into the air like a balloon. Jack began to look anxious.

“I think I’ll go down and see how the sloop’s getting along,” he announced. “It looks to me as though she was a little farther up than she was. I’ve got another anchor aboard and I guess I’d better drop it.”

The others volunteered to accompany him and they went staggering down the slope to the wharf, clutching at their caps and stumbling over bushes under the rude buffets of the wind. The river was running high, with masses of driftwood and froth piled along the margin. The Corsair had swung in amongst the spiles and was apparently trying to rub her varnish off, while the dory—

The boys looked at each other in dismay. Where was the dory? There was not a vestige of it. It had been securely tied to one of the spiles; Jack had attended to it himself; and that it could have tugged loose seemed impossible.

“Bill Glass,” breathed Hal with a kind of “I-told-you-so” inflection.

“I don’t believe it,” replied Bee stoutly. “You’re getting so you blame Bill Glass if you bite your tongue, Hal. Besides, I saw him when he went off and he certainly didn’t have Jack’s dory.”

“He could have come back last night and taken it, couldn’t he?” asked Hal scathingly. “Oh, he’s got it all right enough!”

“But he wouldn’t dare to,” persisted Bee. “Why, he couldn’t hide a dory, could he?”

“He doesn’t have to hide it. He’s painted it blue by this time!”

“Well, somebody must have taken it,” said Jack troubledly, “for I don’t believe any amount of wind would have untied those hitches of mine. Still, I suppose I’d better go up the river a ways and look. May I take the launch, Hal?”

“Of course, and we’ll go along.”

But although they chugged up the stream for a half-mile or more they saw no trace of the Faith and finally Jack declared that it was useless to look farther unless they meant to go all the way to Bill Glass’s. “That dory never got around three bends in the river,” said Jack, “without being towed. She’d have gone ashore long before this.”

So they turned the launch and went back in the teeth of the gale. Fortunately, although the tide was unusually high, the banks of the stream still afforded some protection from the wind. Otherwise the Corsair would have blown on the sand-bars time and again. Back at the island, they kept on to the Crystal Spring. The sloop had worked pretty well over to the south side of the river entrance and was rolling and plunging most undignifiedly. Jack scrambled aboard as soon as the launch was under her lee and presently returned with his second anchor. They ran around the stern of the sloop and almost across to the opposite beach. There Jack tossed the anchor over. Then, paying the cable out, the launch pitched her way back to the sloop and Jack made the rope fast on the bow. They were all pretty well drenched by the time they got back into the quieter water of the river, and as soon as they had made the launch secure where she could not rub against the spiles they got back to the tent as quickly as their legs would carry them.

They heaped wood on the dying fire and tried to dry their garments, but it was not so easy. If they got in the lee of the fire they were choked with smoke and deluged with sparks, while if they moved elsewhere they got little heat and the wind went through their wet clothing until their teeth chattered. Jack finally announced that there was but one thing to do, and that was to get their clothes off, rub themselves dry and warm with towels and dry the garments at the fire. This proved a good idea, for by the time they had applied the rough bath towels vigorously to their bodies they were in a comfortable glow. Draping themselves in blankets, they threw more fuel on the fire and held their clothes in the warmth until they were at least fairly dry. By that time it was long after five o’clock and supper was to be thought of. They decided that hot coffee would be appropriate and that it would be useless to try and do any cooking. So half an hour later they huddled in the tent and ate cold canned tongue, bread and butter, cheese and vanilla cookies and drank plenty of steaming hot coffee.

“That coffee is certainly what I needed,” sighed Hal, “but I won’t be able to sleep a wink before ten o’clock.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t anyhow,” replied Jack, “with this wind howling so. I wish I was sure this old tent wouldn’t leave us in the middle of the night.”

They lighted the lanterns and heaped up the fire again and strove to be cheerful. But the lanterns flared and guttered and the boom of the sea and the roar of the wind were depressing. Even Bee began to look glum, and long before it was nearly their usual bed-time, conversation had entirely died out and the three boys were huddled under their blankets silently watching the lanterns swaying from the roof-pole. They had decided that they would not take their clothes off, since, as Jack pointed out, it might be necessary for them to get up and chase the tent across the island before morning.

“I’d give something to be at home just now,” observed Hal once, “with my back to the library fire. This camping-out isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, fellows.”

“And this is certainly camping out,” agreed Bee. “I suppose it was on nights like this that Old Verny used to light his trusty lantern and take a stroll along the beach, eh, Jack?”

“I dare say. I guess there’s more than one boat in trouble tonight. The wind must be blowing a good forty miles.”

There was not much pleasure in talking, however, even if they had had anything to say, for the noise of the elements was so great that they had almost to shout to make themselves heard across the tent, and so they relapsed into silence again and regretted having drank that coffee.

About nine o’clock a flurry of rain set in and the drops dashed against the tent like hailstones. Several crashes of thunder followed, and once the lightning flared so brightly that the glow of the swaying lanterns was dimmed in the tent. Then the rain blew over, the thunder died away as quickly as it had come and only the dry gale remained. But its fury continued unabated and by ten o’clock had even perceptibly increased. The only thing that saved the tent was the fact that it was protected from the direction of the storm by the shoulder of the hill and the grove. Even as it was, it seemed every moment that at the next onslaught the canvas would be ripped into ribbons or torn from its ropes. The boys huddled under their blankets with taut nerves and staring eyes, watching the canvas above them bulge and flap and the lanterns rock and flare, with sleep a long way off. And yet it is probable that, an hour or so later, each was drowsing a little, for when the first sudden boom of the cannon came Jack heard it as though in a dream, while Bee and Hal, being questioned, declared they had heard nothing. They waited. The minutes passed and only the howling and screeching of the tempest was audible. Jack had about reached the conclusion that he had imagined the sound when it came again:

Boom-m-m-m!

The boys started, and Jack, tossing aside his blankets, jumped to his feet.

“What is it?” shouted Bee anxiously.

“A ship ashore,” answered Jack, buttoning his jacket and pulling his cap down on his head. “Come on!”