“Tommy would be willing if, as she already has said, she could be the whole passenger list,” chuckled Miss Elting.

The girls joked and talked until the night had fallen.  A few faint rays of light filtered through the cabin windows and the dim light from the anchor lantern that hung at the stern of the boat was their only illumination.

Harriet got up and walked to the bow of the boat, now pointed outward.  She sniffed the air.

“Well, what is it, Captain?” inquired Jane.

“Wind,” answered Harriet.  “The wind is freshening, and it’s blowing straight into the little cove here.  The ‘Red Rover’ will be straining at its leashes like an angry dog before morning, unless the wind veers, which I hardly think will be the case.”

“Hooray for Captain Burrell!” cried Crazy Jane.

The sky was overcast and the wind, as Harriet had said, was freshening rapidly.  She went to the lower deck to test the anchor rope.  The anchor was holding firmly.  The wind was now blowing so strongly that the girls found little comfort in sitting on the upper deck.  All hands went below.  With the front cabin door closed the cabin was a comfortable and cosy place in which to sit.  But the cabin floor was acquiring an unpleasant habit of rising and falling.  Tommy’s face, ordinarily pale, had grown ghastly, but she pluckily kept her discomfort to herself.  As a matter of fact the little girl was suffering from a mild attack of seasickness.

“I—­I gueth I’ll go to bed,” she stammered.  “Will thomebody pleathe take off my thhoeth?  If I bend down I’ll thurely fall over on my nothe.”

There was a shout at this.  Both Harriet and Jane knelt on the floor to remove the shoes that Tommy feared to unbutton.  They assisted her into her cot, after which they arranged their own, each girl preparing for bed behind a curtain that had been strung across the cabin, thus making part of the kitchen a dressing room.  In the daytime the curtain was drawn back.

Harriet was the last to retire.  She sat up for an hour after the others had retired, rather anxiously watching the weather and the anchor rope, together with the behavior of the “Red Rover.”  The latter was riding the swells finely and with much less motion than might have been looked for in the fairly heavy sea that was running into the cove.  At last, well satisfied that the boat would ride out the moderate blow, Harriet entered the cabin and extinguishing the lamp prepared for bed, leaving only the solitary anchor light outside to dispel the gloom.

As the night went on, the seas grew with it.  Great swells were sweeping into the cove, and the “Red Rover” was at times rolling heavily.  Once in the night Harriet got up and staggered out through the rear door, whence she made her way to the upper deck.  From there, with the spray dashing over her, she gazed off over the water.  The moon had come up, and she could see fairly well; some light being furnished by it, though heavy clouds intervened.  White-capped waves dashed against the boat.  It was unusually rough for a lake of its size.  She inhaled deeply the strong, bracing air, until, discovering that she was getting wet from the spray, the girl hurried below and crawled into her cot, shivering a little.  Then she fell into a deep sleep, soothed by the rocking of the boat.