Tommy was moaning in her sleep.  The others appeared to be sleeping soundly.  It was late in the night when Harriet was awakened by a terrific crash.  It seemed to her as though something had collided with the “Red Rover.”  Then came a second crash, much louder than the first.  The second was followed by a sound of breaking woodwork.  A draught of cold air smote her in the face, then a huge volume of water swept into the cabin overwhelming and half drowning the occupants.

Cots were overturned, the oil stove went over with a crash, and the table was hurled the length of the cabin, landing bottom side up at the rear end of the cabin.

A chorus of terrified, choking screams followed the second crash, that, to their overwrought imaginations, seemed to have lasted for hours.

“Thave me!  We’re thinking!” wailed Tommy Thompson.

“Harriet!  What has happened?” cried Miss Elting.

“I—­I don’t know.”

The “Red Rover” lurched heavily to one side.  The rush of water that accompanied the lurch tumbled the Meadow-Brook Girls to the lower side of the cabin.  A volume of water rushed over them, and the furnishings of the cabin were piled on top of them; in some instances a crushing weight pinioned them to the floor.

The houseboat had sustained a severe blow, though as yet they could not determine the nature of it.  To make the situation more terrifying the cabin was in utter darkness.  For a moment the voices of the Meadow-Brook Girls were stilled; then a chorus of screams, more terrified than before, rose from the lips of the frightened girls.

CHAPTER V

Land ho!

“Please—­please keep quiet,” cried Harriet, making herself heard above the tumult.  “Don’t be frightened!  We aren’t sinking, and we are not going to.  Answer loudly when I call your names, so that I may know each one of you is here.”

“Now,” she continued after the frightened girls had answered to their names.  “We’ll try to find out what happened.  You see that the boat has stopped pitching, and the side roll isn’t as pronounced as it was.”

“What’th the anthwer?” piped Tommy.

“I don’t know—­yet,” Harriet confessed.  “But I’m going to know.”

“The water is still coming in, and getting deeper,” shivered Margery.

“Get out through the rear door,” Harriet commanded.  “One at a time.”

“Which door is the rear one?” queried Crazy Jane.  “All doors look alike to me.”

“Move away from the direction that the water is coming from,” Harriet continued.

Assisted by Jane McCarthy the girls obeyed Harriet’s directions.  Tommy and Margery first, then Miss Elting and Hazel.  In the cockpit the water was not as deep, but Jane drove them all to the upper deck.

“The captain must go last, you know,” laughed Harriet, as she climbed up to join them.