A SEPTEMBER SQUALL
It was a still, hazy September afternoon, so warm that the frost that
had helped to open the chestnut burrs that very morning seemed to have
been an hallucination. The lake was as calm as a millpond; but Lake
Huron is notoriously treacherous.
Henry, the boatkeeper at Lakeview Hall, was not as weatherwise as he
should have been. He had allowed a number of boats to be taken out that
afternoon without warning the girls to beware of squalls.
Not that such warning would have been taken seriously by many of the
girls, for a fairer day in the seeming had not appeared on the calendar.
Nan and Bess decided to go out in one of the double canoes.
The chums from Tillbury did not own a boat. Several of the older girls
did, and Bess had already written home for a motor boat.
"I'll tease dad for a motor boat first," she confided to Nan. "Of course
he won't hear to _that_. So I'll try to get a sailboat--what do they
call 'em?--a _cat_, with an auxiliary engine. And he won't listen to
that, either."
"Why ask for something you know you can't have?" asked the wondering
Nan.
"Goodness! don't you see?" exclaimed Bess, exasperated at such lack of
understanding. "Why, if I ask for something big, dad will compromise in
the end, and probably give me just what I originally expected to have.
'Aim high' is my motto. Oh, we'll get a nice canoe, at the least, or a
cedar boat with a portable engine and propeller."
This way of getting what one wished rather shocked Nan, who always asked
pointblank for what she wanted, but was usually wise enough not to think
too much about what she knew she could not have.
"That's an awfully roundabout way of getting what you desire," she
suggested to Bess.
"Oh! you don't know my father. Mother has to do the same. He has plenty
of money, but sometimes he hates to give it up. I can tease almost
anything out of him."
"Hush, Bess! Suppose anybody else should hear you?" Nan suggested.
"Well, it's true," said careless Bess. "There's that Linda Riggs going
down with Gracie Mason to the dock. I bet Walter is coming in his
_Bargain Rush_ for Grace, and Linda will get invited. I'd just love to
have a motor boat, Nan, just to get ahead of Linda. She can't have one,
I heard Cora say, because her father is afraid of them."
"None of the girls own motor boats," Nan said, calmly. "The canoe is all
right."
They were in the canoe and had put up the little leg-o'-mutton sail,
before Walter Mason's _Bargain Rush_ came out around Lighthouse Point,
from the inlet, and chugged over to the school dock where Walter's
sister was waiting.
"Walter is just devoted to Grace," Nan said. "I think he is a dreadfully
nice boy."
"Better keep your opinion to yourself," laughed Bess. "Linda thinks she
about owns him. You see, he's the only boy available about the school
and Linda has always been used to having the best of everything."
"So have you," laughed Nan, roguishly.
"But not in boys!" cried Bess. "Billy is enough. If they are all like
that brother of mine----"
"You know Walter isn't," said Nan.
"Goodness! No! Walter Mason is as meek as Moses! As meek as his own
sister. And I think Gracie is the most milk-and-watery girl I ever saw."
"She's timid, I know," began Nan, but her chum interrupted quickly:
"Oh, yes! You'll find a good word to say for her, Nan. You always
champion the cause of the weak and afflicted. Every sore-eyed kitten you
saw on the street at Tillbury used to appeal to you."
"Oh, bosh!" exclaimed Nan. "You make me out a whole lot worse than I
am."
The canoe suddenly dipped sideways and Bess squealed as a splash of
water came inboard. "Sit down! you're rocking the boat!" she sang.
"That was a flaw of wind. Guess we'll have to watch out. Don't tie the
sheet to that cleat, Bess."
"'Sheet'? Oh! you mean this rope. I never can remember nautical names.
But I've got to hitch the thing, Nan. I want to wash my hands. And this
water ought to be got out. There's a big sponge in the bow-locker.
There! I got that right, didn't I? 'Bow locker.'"
Nan was steering with a paddle and could not give her full attention to
the sail. The sea was choppy and it took some effort to keep the head of
the canoe properly pointed.
Nan was bare-headed, but Bess wore a rubber bathing cap. Nan's braids
snapped about her shoulders when the boisterous wind swooped down upon
them. Farther out upon the lake white-caps appeared.
"I guess we'd better not go very far to-day," Nan said cautiously.
"There go Walter and those girls!" Bess cried. "Yes! Linda is aboard.
What did I tell you?"
"Well, they can get back more quickly than _we_ can," Nan said
seriously.
"Oh, let's go a little farther. I like it when the canoe tumbles about,"
declared reckless Bess.
Nan knew that if the wind held at its present point it would be more
aid to them in running back than while they were on this present tack,
so she did not insist upon turning about immediately. What she did not
know was, that the recurrent flaws in the wind foretold a sudden change
in its direction.
There were plenty of other pleasure boats about them at first; and as
Bess pointed out, Walter Mason's _Bargain Rush_ had passed the canoe,
going out. What the two chums did not notice, however, was that these
other boats, including the _Bargain Rush_, soon made for the shore.
The fishing boats from Freeling were driving in toward the inlet, too.
Wise boatmen saw the promise of "dirty weather." Not so Nan and Bess.
The tang of the spray on their lips, the wind blowing their braids and
freshening the roses in their cheeks, the caress of it on their bare
arms and necks, the excitement of sitting in the pitching canoe--all
delighted and charmed the girls.
They were soon far from all other boats, the canoe was scuttling over
the choppy waves like a quail running to cover, the bellying sail
actually hiding from their eyes the threatening clouds that were piling
up in the east and south.
Suddenly the wind died. Their sail hung flabbily from the pole. Nan
began to look anxiously about.
"If we have to paddle clear back to the boathouse," she began, when Bess
suddenly gasped:
"Oh, Nan! Look there!"
Nan gazed as her chum pointed "sou'east." A mass of slate-colored clouds
seemed to reach from the apex of the heavenly arch to the lead-colored
water. Along the lower edge of this curtain of cloud ran a white line,
like the bared teeth of a wolf!
Nan was for the moment speechless. She had never seen such alarming
clouds. She and Bess had yet to see a storm on the Great Lakes. Nothing
like this approach of wind and rain had ever been imagined by the two
girls.
Out of the clouds came a low moaning--the voice of the rising wind.
Soon, too, the swish of falling rain, which was beating the surface of
the water to foam as it advanced, was also audible.
"Oh! what shall we do?" moaned Bess.
Nan was aroused by this. She glanced wildly around. They were a long way
off Lighthouse Point, at the entrance to Freeling Inlet, and the storm
was coming in such a direction that they must be driven up the lake and
away from the Hall boat-landing--if, indeed, the canoe were not
immediately swamped.
"Let go the sheet, Bess! Let go the sheet!" was Nan's first cry.
"Goodness me! And the pillow cases, too, if you say so!" chattered Bess,
clawing wildly at the rope in question.
But she had tied it in a hard knot to the cleat, and the more she tried
to pull the knot loose, the tighter it became.
"Quick! quick!" Nan cried, trying to paddle the canoe around.
She understood nothing about heading into the wind's eye; Nan only
realized that they would likely be overturned if the wind and sea struck
the canoe broadside.
The storm which had, at first, approached so slowly, now came down upon
the canoe at terrific speed. The wind shrieked, the spray flew before it
in a cloud, and the curtain of rain surrounded and engulfed the two
girls and their craft.
The sail was torn to shreds. Nan had managed to head the canoe about and
they took in the waves over the stern. She was saturated to the very
skin by the first bucket of water.
Bess, with a wild scream of fear, cast herself into Nan's arms.
"We'll be drowned! we'll be drowned!" was her cry.
Nan thought so, too, but she tried to remain calm.
The water fairly boiled about them. It jumped and pitched most awfully.
The water that came inboard threatened to swamp the canoe.
Peril, Nan had faced before; but nothing like this. Each moment, as the
canoe staggered on and the waves rose higher and the wind shrieked
louder, Nan believed that they were nearer and nearer to death.
She did not see how they could possibly escape destruction. The sea
fairly yawned for them. The canoe sank lower and lower as the
foam-streaked water slopped in over the gunnels. _They were going to be
swamped!_