CHAPTER XVIII--FROM ONE THING TO ANOTHER

"Let 'em alone, Amy!" begged Jessie, from the bow. "You are only twisting the boat's head around and making it harder for Nell to row."

"I--could--do better--if the rudder was unshipped," declared Nell, pantingly.

Immediately Amy jerked the heavy rudder out of its sockets. Fortunately she had got the lines over her head before doing this, or she might have been carried overboard.

For the rudder was too much for Amy. The rising waves tore it out of her hands the instant it was loose, and away it went on a voyage of its own.

"There!" exclaimed Jessie, with exasperation. "What do you suppose that grouchy old man will say when we bring him back his boat without the rudder?"

"He won't say so much as he would if we didn't bring him back his boat at all," declared Amy. "I'll pay for the rudder."

Jessie felt that the situation was far too serious for Amy to speak so carelessly. She urged Nell to let her help with the oars; and, in truth, the other found handling the two oars with the rising waves cuffing them to and fro rather more than she had bargained for.

Jessie shipped the starboard oar in the bow and together she and Nell did their very best. But the wind swooped down upon them, tearing the tops from the waves and saturating the three girls with spray.

"I guess I know what that white-haired boy tried to tell us," gasped Amy, from the stern. "He must have seen this thunderstorm coming."

"All the other boats got ashore," panted Nell. "We were foolish not to see."

"Nobody on lookout--that's it!" groaned Amy. "Oh!"

A streak of lightning seemed to cross the sky, and the thunder followed almost instantly. Down came the rain--tempestuously. It drove over the water, flattening the waves for a little, then making the sea boil.

"Hurry up, girls!" wailed Amy. "Get ashore--do! I'm sopping wet."

Jessie and Nell had no breath with which to reply to her. They were pulling at the top of their strength. The shore was not far away in reality. But it seemed a long way to pull with those heavy oars.

The rain swept landward and drove everybody, even the few bathers, to cover. The shallow water was torn again into whitecaps and a lot of spray came inboard as Jessie and Nell tried their very best to reach the strand.

Amy could do nothing but encourage them. There was no way by which she might aid their escape from the tempest. One thing, she did nothing to hinder! Even she was in no mood for "making fun."

In fact, this tempest was an experience such as none of the three girls had seen before. Jessie and Nell were well-nigh breathless and their arms and shoulders began to ache.

"Let me exchange with one of you, Nell! Jess!" cried Amy, her voice half drowned by the noise of wind and rain.

"Stay where you are!" commanded Jessie, from the bow, as her chum started to come forward. "You might tip us over!"

"Sit down!" sang the cheerful Nell. "Sit down, you're rocking the boat!"

"But I want to help!" complained Amy.

"You did your helping when you got rid of that rudder," returned Nell, comfortingly. "Do be still, Amy Drew!"

"How can one be still in such a jerky, pitching boat?" gasped the other girl. "Do--do you think you can reach land, Jessie Norwood?"

"I've hopes of it," responded her chum. "It isn't very far."

"I wonder how far it is to--to land underneath the keel?" sputtered Amy.

"For pity's sake stop that!" cried Nell Stanley. "Don't suggest such gloomy and gruesome things."

"Well," grumbled Amy, "I believe it's the nearest land."

"I shouldn't be surprised," panted Jessie. "But don't talk about it, Amy."

The rain swept over and past the small boat in such heavy sheets that finally the girls could scarcely see the shore at all. Amy found something to do--and something of importance. Although not much water slopped into the boat over the sides, the rain itself began to fill the bottom. The water was soon ankle deep.

"Bail it! Bail it!" shouted Nell.

"Oh! is that what the tin dipper is for?" gasped Amy. "I--I thought it was to drink out of."

Afterward "Amy's drinking cup" made a joke, but just then nobody laughed at the girl's mistake. She set to work with vigor to bail out the boat, and kept it up "for hours and hours" she declared, though the others insisted it was "minutes and minutes."

At last they reached the strand.

One of the bathing house men ran out to help pull the bow of the boat up on the sands.

"Run along up to the hotel!" he cried. "There is no good shelter down here for you."

The moment they could do so the three girls leaped ashore. Thus relieved of their weight, the boat was the more easily dragged out of the reach of the waves, which now began to roll in madly. The lightning increased in its intensity, the thunder reverberated from the bluff. The tempest was at its height when they hastened to mount the winding wooden stair.

"Oh, my blister! Oh, my blister!" moaned Nell, as she climbed upward.

"Everything I've got on sticks to me like a twin sister," declared Amy Drew. "Oh, dear! How shall we ever get home in these soaked rags?"

"We must go to the hotel," cried Jessie. "Come on."

She was the first to reach the top of the stairs. There was a garden and lawn to cross to reach the veranda. As the rain was beating in from this direction none of the hotel guests was on this side of the house. The three wet girls ran as hard as they could for shelter.

Just as Jessie, leading the trio, came up the veranda steps, she heard a loud and harsh voice exclaim:

"Well, of all things! I'd like to know what you girls think you are doing here? You have no business at this hotel. Go away!"

Jessie almost stopped, and Amy and Nell ran into her.

"Oh, do go on!" cried Amy. "Let us get inside somewhere----"

"Well, I should say _not_!" broke out the harsh voice again, and the three Roselawn girls beheld Belle Ringold and Sally Moon confronting them on the piazza. "Just look at what wants to get into the hotel, Sally! Did you ever?"

"They look like beggars," laughed Sally. "The manager would give them marching orders in a hurry, I guess."

"Do let us in out of the rain," Jessie said faintly. She did not know but perhaps the hotel people would object to strangers coming inside. But Amy demanded:

"What do you think you have to say about it, Belle Ringold? Is this something more that you or your folks own? Do go along, Belle, and let us pass."

"Not much; you won't come in here!" declared Belle, setting herself squarely in their way. "No, you don't! That door's locked, anyway. It belongs to Mrs. Olliver's private suite--Mrs. Purdy Olliver, of New York. I am sure she won't want you bedrabbled objects hanging around her windows."

"Go around to the kitchen door," said Sally Moon, laughing. "That is where you look as though you belonged."

"Oh, that's good, Sally!" cried Belle. "Ex-act-ly! The kitchen door!"

At that moment another flash of lightning and burst of thunder made the two unpleasant girls from New Melford cringe and shriek aloud. They backed against the closed door Belle had mentioned as being the wealthy Mrs. Olliver's private entrance.

Amy and Nell screamed, too, and the three wet girls clung together for a moment. The rain came with a rush into the open porch, and if they could be more saturated than they were, this blast of rain would have done it.

"We have got to get under shelter!" shouted Jessie, and dragged her two friends farther into the veranda. Belle and Sally might have been mean enough to try to drive them back, but at this point somebody interfered.

A long window, like a door, opened and a lady looked out, shielding herself from the wind by holding the glass door.

"Girls! Girls!" she cried. "You will be drowned out there. Come right in."

"Fine!" gasped Amy, not at all under her breath. "Belle doesn't own the hotel, after all!"

"It's Mrs. Olliver!" exclaimed Sally Moon in a shrill voice, as she and Belle came out of retirement and likewise approached the open window.

"Come right in here," said the lady, cheerfully, as Jessie and her friends approached. "You are three very plucky girls. I saw you out in your boat when the storm struck you. Come in and I'll have my maid find you something dry to put on."

"Oh, fine!" sighed Amy again.

The trio of storm-beaten girls hastened in out of the wind and rain; but when Belle and Sally would have followed, Mrs. Olliver stopped them firmly.

"Don't you belong in the hotel?" she asked. "Then go around to the main entrance if you wish to come in. You are at home."

She actually closed the French window--but gently--in the faces of the bold duo. Amy, at least, was vastly amused. She winked wickedly at Jessie and Nell Stanley.

"This will break Belle's heart," she whispered.