CHAPTER XVI

THE LOON

"We'll stay here long enough to get the motor started again, and then we'll go on," declared Sylvia, with a confidence she did not altogether feel. In spite of her common sense and her "nowadaysness," she felt an almost overpowering sensation of fear. It was as if the darkness were pressing down on her like some black pall--a blanket, smothery and choking.

Yet it was but the ordinary darkness of the woods. But it was an intense blackness, relieved only by the stars, and only a few of them, for the night was somewhat cloudy.

Those of you who have never been in the woods after dark have no idea how black it can be at night.

In every city, and in most small towns and villages, there are some lights that burn all night. So that, even if you are not actually at the source of illumination, you can see a sort of diffused glow that, in a measure, cuts the blackness. But it is not so in the woods.

The very darkness of the tree trunks seems to add to the blackness of the night, as though they had absorbed what little light the sun might have left. And if, perchance, you come upon a clump of white birches when travelling along a woodland path after night has fallen, they only seem to accentuate the darkness, standing out as they do like attenuated ghosts.

"Oh, I can't bear it!" went on Rose, with a little shiver. She cuddled close against Hazel. "I can't bear it!"

"Don't be silly," was the retort. "The dark can't hurt you."

"No, but to stay in--in those woods!" and Rose waved an unseen hand at the forest, to the very edge of which the _Clytie_ had drifted with the last of her momentum after the stopping of the motor.

"We don't have to stay there, we can sleep on the boat and anchor it out in the lake," said Alice. "What are you doing, Sylvia?" she demanded.

"I'm going to try to start the motor," was the answer. "One of you girls get the boat hook and turn us around. I don't want to collide with the bank."

"No danger of that," declared Hazel. "She won't start, and if she does--wait, I'll throw out the clutch."

This she did, while Alice took the boat hook, and Sylvia proceeded to operate the self-starter again. The batteries had been recharged somewhat while the motor was going, operating the small dynamo, or magneto, and there was available an electric current for some little time.

Sylvia threw over the operating switch. There was a grinding of gears as the powerful little mechanism operated the propeller shaft, but the motor proper remained mute. Once again there seemed to be trouble with the ignition system, though the spark plugs showed, in the upper chamber where the auxiliary spark-gap was located, that there was current flowing somewhere.

"But it doesn't reach the ignition chamber and explode the gas," said Sylvia, in disappointed tones, as, again and again, she threw over the self-starter switch.

"Let it go," advised Hazel.

"What?" Sylvia cried.

"I say let it go. Don't try any more. It won't work. The engine needs overhauling, and there's no use wasting all the power in the storage battery. If we do we won't have any for lights, and we don't want to stay here in the dark."

"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Rose, shivering again.

"There are oil lamps," murmured Sylvia, as she looked at the self-starter again, as if she contemplated trying that once more.

"Oh, but they are so mussy," complained Alice. "Do leave some current in the battery for the incandescents. It will be something, anyhow, as long as we have to stay here."

"Oh, do we _really_ have to stay here?" wailed Rose. "Can't we paddle home?"

"No oars," said Sylvia, briefly.

"And just where is home?" asked Alice. "Who knows?"

"Why--why--you can't see anything!" declared Hazel. "Look!"

"What's the use of looking if you can't see anything?" demanded Sylvia, just the least bit crossly. And no wonder, for she had laboured long over the motor, and fruitlessly.

"Oh, but we seem to be surrounded by darkness!" went on Hazel. "There isn't a patch of light anywhere but up above," and she motioned to one or two faintly-shining stars.

"We've drifted around some point of land, and we're in a little bay," was the opinion of Alice. "Two ends of land overlap. We can go out the way we came in, if we could only get the boat started."

"I don't like running in these unknown waters after dark," said Sylvia.

"But what are we to do, my dear?" asked Rose. "Can we stay here?"

"Can we stay anywhere else?" was the instant question. "We might as well make the best of it, I think, and get comfortable. We have something left to eat, we can make tea--or coffee if we brought any with us--and there is room to sleep, after a fashion."

"But not with the boat so near shore," insisted Rose, for the bow of the _Clytie_ was scraping along the wooded bank in response to some slight current of air or water.

"No, we can anchor out a way," admitted Sylvia. "We'll have to go ashore, though, and get a stone for an anchor."

"Oh, what will Aunt Theodora think and say? What will the folks at the hotel think? They'll be worried to death, send out a search party for us, rouse the lake. It will be terrible!" cried Rose, in dismay.

"No more terrible for them than for us," retorted Sylvia. "This is none of our doing. We'd be only too glad to get back if we could. But we can't make the motor 'mote,' and it would be foolish and risky to get out in the middle of the lake, and be stalled there. We are much better off here."

"I suppose we could manage to call for help, or make our way to some camp or cottage," suggested Hazel.

"I'd rather not," Sylvia said, more calmly than she had yet spoken. "If we call for help, the chances are we wouldn't be heard. This seems to be a deserted part of Raquette Lake. Then, too, we'd only strain our voices, and get hysterically nervous if we didn't get an answer."

"What about shoving the boat along the shore, and close to it, with poles?" suggested Alice. "We could do that, and perhaps get to some camp that way."

"We might," assented Sylvia. "But do we want to reach the camp of some men or boys in the middle of the night, all tired out and dishevelled from our efforts in poling the boat? I, for one, don't. I prefer to stay here, in our own boat, where we can lie down in some sort of comfort, at least. We can manage to get enough to eat with what we had left over from lunch. I vote we stay here!"

"But what will people say?" asked Hazel.

"What can they say? I guess it isn't the first time a motor-boat party has been stalled by a balky engine. People can't say anything."

"I shan't mind it if they do," declared Alice. "Nowadays girls are accorded many more privileges than in former years."

"Even to staying out all night without a chaperon?" demanded Rose.

"When it can't be helped--yes!" said Sylvia, half defiantly.

"Well, it certainly can't be helped, in this case," declared Alice.

"Poor Aunt Theodora!" murmured Hazel. "She will be distracted!"

"Nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Alice, in her most convincing tones. "She knows we can take care of ourselves."

"That's what I say," added Sylvia. "She knows we are in a good safe boat. Too safe!" she added, with a short laugh. "It won't even go, like the old lady's goat in the nursery rhyme. And we are all good swimmers. She may worry a bit at first, but she has had experience with too many schoolgirls' escapades to fret long."

"This isn't an _escapade_!" declared Rose.

"What is it, then?"

"It will be an _experience_ before we have finished," said Hazel, with a short laugh.

Somehow the girls could laugh a little now. The feeling of gloom and terror was wearing off.

"Well, the first thing to do is to go ashore and find a stone for an anchor," said Sylvia, getting practical suddenly. Not that she had not been so before, but this was adapting practicality to new conditions. "We won't need a very heavy one, as there is little wind, and we won't drag much. We want to anchor only a very short way from the shore."

"What next?" asked Hazel.

"Next we'll find something to eat, and get comfortable for the night."

"I never could go to sleep," remonstrated Rose, with a premonitory glance over her shoulder at the blackness that seemed to grow more and more intense every moment.

"Well, if you sit up long enough you can go to sleep," suggested Sylvia. "Now I'll light a lantern, and we'll go ashore for the stone."

The boat was pushed around with the pole to enable a safe landing to be made. The rope was carried ashore and made fast to a tree branch, to insure the _Clytie_ against drifting off while they were hunting for the rock-anchor.

Then, with one of the oil lamps, which were used for signals in case the electrics gave out, the four girls went ashore. They easily found the proper stone near the water's edge, and making fast the rope to it, pushed the boat out a little way from the bank, and dropped the anchor overboard with a splash that awoke the echoes in that silent place.

"And now for supper, tea, dinner, breakfast, or whatever we choose to call it," suggested Sylvia, who seemed to have taken command of the situation. "What shall it be--tea or coffee? We have both," she added, for a hasty search among the lunch baskets had disclosed that fact.

"Coffee!" voted Rose. "It will help to keep us awake, and I don't want to close my eyes."

"Don't be silly!" scoffed Sylvia. "Be a real member of the Nowadays Club!"

"All right, I'll try," was the rather faint answer.

The alcohol stove, which burned the new solid fuel, was set going, and water, in a tiny kettle, was put on to boil. The girls busied themselves setting out the dishes and food on the folding table which was set up in the centre of the cabin, the seats, which later would become bunks, being ranged on either side.

"Now, could anything be more cosy than this?" asked Sylvia, when the kettle was humming.

"It _is_ nice," assented Hazel. "If only Aunt Theodora knew we were here and all right, I would not worry so----"

Hazel's remarks were interrupted by such a wild, weird cry, bursting out on the silence of the night, echoing and reverberating in the air all about them, that the girls involuntarily uttered screams, and huddled together in the cabin of the boat.

They stared at each other with fear-lustred eyes, and when Rose dropped a cup, letting it slip from her nerveless fingers so that it crashed into pieces on the cabin floor, it was rather a relief than otherwise of the tension.

Again came that wild, weird cry, something like the laugh of a maniac, or the defiant yell of a maddened beast. It started with a low cadence, rose to a shrill scream, and died away like the last blast from some siren whistle.

"What--what in the name of mercy was that?" gasped Hazel.

"Maybe--maybe some one--calling for us," whispered Rose.

"No human being would call that way," Alice declared, haltingly.

Again came the cry, eerie and nerve-racking. It seemed to be nearer the boat now.

"Perhaps campers trying to scare us," stammered Hazel.

"No one--man or boy--could yell that way," said Sylvia. "It must be----"

A third time came the cry--banshee-like in its weirdness. It was followed by a splash in the water, seemingly at the very bow of the _Clytie_.

"Oh!" screamed Rose, shrilly.

"Be still!" commanded Sylvia, and she laughed.

"She--she's getting--hysterics! Oh, dear!" half-moaned Alice.

"Nonsense!" and Sylvia was laughing harder than ever. "It's only a loon!"