“To camp.”

The girls sat about the campfire, singing the songs of the Camp Girls until ten o’clock that evening, after which the Meadow-Brook party bade good night to their companions and strolled down to the bar, thence out to the cabin.  All were keenly alive to the pleasures that awaited them on the following day, when they were to have their first sail in the “Sister Sue.”

Harriet made ready for bed with her companions, but she was not sleepy.  She lay on her bough bed near the door, where she remained wide awake, thinking over the occurrences of the past few days.  A sound out on the bay, as if something had dropped to the deck of the sloop, attracted her attention.  The girl crawled from her bed and out to the front of the cabin on all fours.  She then sat up, leaning her back against the cabin; shading her eyes, she gazed off at the boat riding easily in the bay.

The “Sue” was faintly outlined in the dim light of the night, but the night was too dark to enable the girl to make out anything in detail, nor was there a sound on board to indicate that any one was awake.

“It may be that the captain is putting his man ashore, or else has just returned from doing so.  Still, this seems to me a pretty late hour to be sending any one ashore.”  Harriet thought she could now make out the small boat floating astern of the “Sue,” where it was ordinarily kept, though she could not be certain of this.  “Ah!  There is something going on over there.”

The faint creak of block and tackle reached her listening ears, which she strained and strained, even closing her eyes that she might concentrate wholly on the sense of hearing.  The creaking continued for a couple of minutes, then ceased altogether.

“I wonder if the captain can be making sail to go out?” Harriet asked herself, opening wide her eyes and gazing toward the sloop.  But the latter was riding lazily on the gentle swell as before, the girl being unable to make out anything that looked like the sail.  She thought she surely would be able to see the sail, had it been hoisted.

Something was dropped on the deck, making a great clatter, then for several minutes all was silent on board the “Sister Sue.”  Harriet could not imagine what was going on there.  After a time there were further evidences of activity on board; noises, faint, it is true, which indicated that something out of the ordinary was taking place on the boat.  Harriet wondered if she had not better call Miss Elting and have her listen, too.  Upon second thought, however, she decided not to do so.  In the first place she could see and hear fully as much as could the guardian, besides which, were she to awaken the guardian, the other girls undoubtedly would be disturbed.  They might make a noise that would prevent her learning what was being done on board the sloop.

Harriet shivered, for she was in her kimono, while the breeze blowing in from the sea was fresh and penetrating.  She felt a sneeze coming.  The girl made heroic efforts to repress the sneeze, then, finding she could not, stuffed an end of her kimono into her mouth and covered her nose with both hands.