The girls lingered long around the fire after supper listening to Miss Amesbury telling tales of her various travels until one by one the logs fell apart and glimmered out into blackness.  “And now,” said Miss Amesbury, “let’s sing one good night song and then roll into bed.  We want to be up early in the morning and continue our voyage.  There’s a heap of ‘exploraging’ for us to do.”

Some time during the night Sahwah was aroused by a gentle pattering noise on her rubber poncho.  “It’s raining!” she exclaimed to Hinpoha, her sleeping partner.

Hinpoha stirred and murmured drowsily and immediately lay still again.

“It’s raining hard!” cried Sahwah, now wide awake.

One by one the others began to realize what was happening, and burrowed down under their ponchos, only to emerge a few moments later half smothered.

“Everybody lie still,” called Sahwah, “and keep your blankets covered.  Hinpoha and I will go out and bring up canoes for shelters.”

As she spoke she reached for her bathing suit, which was down under the poncho, and wriggled into it.  Hinpoha, still half asleep, but mechanically obeying Sahwah’s energetic directions, got into her bathing suit and wriggled out of the bed, drawing the poncho up over her pillow and blankets.

The two sped down to the shore, where the canoes were drawn up on the rocks, and hastily turning one over sideways and packing all their provisions under it, they carried the other two back to the camping ground and inverted them over the head-ends of the beds, their ends propped up on stones, where, tilted back at an angle which shed the water off backward, they made an admirable shelter.  Underneath these solid umbrellas the pillows of the girls were as dry as though indoors, and the ponchos protected the blankets.  Let the rain come down as hard as it liked, these babes in the wood were snug and warm.  As though accepting their challenge to get them wet, the drops came thicker and faster, until they pounded down in a perfect torrent, making a merry din on the canoes as they fell.

“It sounds as if they were saying, ’We’ll get you yet, we’ll get you yet, we’ll get you yet,’” exclaimed Migwan.

Sahwah and Hinpoha, snugly rolled in once more, began to sing “How dry I am.”  The others took it up, and soon the woods rang with the taunting song of the Winnebagos to the Rain Bird, who replied with a heavier gush than ever.  Thunder began to crash overhead, lightning flashed all about them, the great pines tossed and roared like the sea.  But the Winnebagos, undismayed, made merry over the storm, and gradually dropped off to sleep again, lulled by the pattering of the raindrops.

In the morning the rain was still falling, rather to their dismay, for they had expected that the storm would soon pass over.  The thunder and lightning had ceased, the wind had subsided, and the rain had turned into a steady downpour that looked as if it meant to last all day.