"Come quick, Ag! We'll be blown away," declared Ruth.
"I--I----What'll we do?" whimpered Agnes.
"We must hold the tent down. Come on! Get into your mackintosh. I'll get the lantern."
Around the upright pole in the sleeping part of the tent were hung the girls' outer garments. Ruth got into her own raincoat and buttoned it to her ankles. She left Agnes struggling with hers while she ran to unhang the lantern. She knew the night must be as black as a pocket outside.
"Wha--what you going to do?" stuttered Agnes.
"Drive the pegs in deeper. One of them pulled out."
"I guess we'll have to, if we don't want to lose our tent. Hear that wind?"
"Think I'm going to unlace that front flap when the wind's blowing right into it?"
"Can't we get out yonder, where the peg has been pulled?"
"But how'll we get in again when all the stakes are driven down hard?" snapped Ruth, beginning to unlace the flaps of the rear wall of the tent.
"Oh! oh!" moaned Agnes. "Hear that wind?"
"I wouldn't care if it only _hollered_," gasped Ruth. "It's what it will do if it ever gets under this tent, that troubles me!"
She unlaced the flaps only a little way. "Come along with that lantern, Ag. We've got to crawl under."
"'Get down and get under,'" giggled Agnes, hysterically.
But she brought the lantern and followed Ruth out of the tent, on hands and knees. When they stood up and tried to go around to that side of the tent where the peg had pulled out, the wind almost knocked them down.
"And how the sleet cuts!" gasped Agnes, her arm across her eyes for protection.
"It's sand," explained Ruth. "I thought it was spray from the river. But a good deal of it is sand--just like a sand-storm in the desert."
"Well!" grumbled Agnes, "I hope it's killing a lot of those sandfleas that bother us so. I don't see how they can live and be blown about this way."
Ruth tackled the first post at the corner and beat it down as hard as she could, Agnes holding the lantern so that the older girl could see where to strike.
They went from one peg to the next, taking each in rotation. And when they reached the one that had pulled out entirely, Ruth drove that into the ground just as far as it would go.
Strangely enough, throughout all this business, Tess and Dot did not awake. Ruth went clear around the tent, driving the stakes. The wind howled; the sand and spray blew; and the voices of the Night and of the Storm seemed fairly to yell at them. Still the smaller Corner House girls slept through it all. Ruth and Agnes crept back into the tent and laced the flaps down in safety.