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.”
[Illustration: THE BOYS BUILT A ROARING FIRE ON A LARGE FLAT ROCK.]
There happened to be a dead tree near by, and it was soon converted
into firewood. The boys built a roaring fire on a large flat rock, and
after it had burnt for a little while they pushed it about six feet
from the place where they had started it, and, after piling fresh fuel
on it, laid down on the hot rock with their feet to the flames. The
fire had heated the rock so that they could hardly bear to touch it,
but the heat dried their wet clothes rapidly, and kept them from taking
severe colds. Meanwhile their blankets had been spread out near the
fire, and in half an hour were very nearly dry, and pretty severely
scorched. Two large logs were then rolled on the fire, and when they
were in a blaze the boys wrapped themselves in their blankets, and,
lying as near to the fire as they could without actually burning,
resumed their interrupted sleep. They found the rock rather a hard bed,
and it offered no temptation to laziness; so it happened that they were
all broad awake at half-past four; and though somewhat stiff from lying
on a rocky bed, were none the worse for their night’s adventure.
“There’s one thing I’m going to do this very day,” said Harry, as they
were dressing themselves after their morning swim. “I’m going to write
to the Department to send us a big rubber bag, that we can put our
spare clothes in and keep them dry. There’s no fun in being wet and
having nothing dry to put on.”
“If we have the bag sent to Albany, it will get there by the time we
do,” said Tom. “You write the letter while we are getting breakfast.”
So Harry wrote to the Department as follows:
“DEAR UNCLE JOHN,--We’ve been wet through with a steamboat once,
and the tide wet us the first night, and we got rained on, and I
jumped in to get Joe out, and we’ve had a gorgeous time. Please send
us a big water-proof bag to put our spare clothes in, so that we
can have something dry. Please send it to Albany, and we will stop
there at the post-office for it. Please send it right away. You said
the Department furnished everything. We’ve been dry twice since we
started, but it didn’t last long. There never was such fun. All the
boys send their love to you. Please don’t forget the bag. From your
affectionate nephew,
“HARRY.”
“This was the morning that you were going to sleep till eight o’clock
without waking up, Harry,” said Tom, as they were eating their
breakfast.
“There’s nothing that will wake a fellow up so quick as the Hudson
River rolling in on him. I hadn’t expected to wake up in that way,”
answered Harry.
“So far we have done nothing but find out how stupid we are,” said Tom.
“Seems to me we must have found it pretty near all out by this time.
There can’t be many more stupid things that we haven’t done.”
“There won’t any accident happen to-night,” replied Harry; “for I’ll
make sure that the tent is pitched so far from the water that we can’t
be wet again. I wonder if every fellow learns to camp out by getting
into scrapes as we do. It is very certain that we won’t forget what we
learn on this cruise.”
“I’m beginning to get tired of ham,” exclaimed Joe. “We’ve been eating
ham ever since we started. Let’s get some eggs to-day.”
“And some raspberries,” suggested Jim. “It’s the season for them.”
“And let’s catch some fish,” said Tom.
“That’s what we’ll do,” said Harry. “We’ll sail till eleven o’clock,
and then we’ll go fishing and catch our dinner.”
This suggestion pleased everybody; and when, at about six o’clock, they
set sail with a nice breeze from the south, everybody kept a lookout
for a good fishing-ground, and wondered why they had not thought of
fishing before.