“We can make a torch of wood,” said Jack, when it developed that none of them had one of the pocket electric lights.
But just as Jack and the others were about to enter the cave the mutterings of thunder which had been increasing, culminated in such a clap that the girls, involuntarily placed their hands over their ears.
“Come on! Run for the bungalow!” cried Cora. “Else we’ll be caught in a terrible storm! It’s starting to rain now.”
Some hot drops hissed down, the prelude to an almost tropical fury of the elements it seemed.
“We can go into the cave,” suggested Paul.
“No!” cried his sister. “You shan’t go in there with this storm coming up. The cave will keep. Come on, let’s run!”
She darted off down the side of the mountain, the other girls following. The boys hesitated a moment, and then, not wishing to desert the girls, even though the latter ran first, they followed.
“We can come back to the cave to-morrow,” said Walter. “It won’t run away. And to explore it well we ought to have the electric lights. Come on.”
Paul and Jack followed him, and they all reached the girls’ bungalow just as the deluge of rain came down.
For an hour or more the storm raged, blinding lightning and deafening thunder succeeding one another. But the bungalow was snug and safe, though once, when a tree was struck not far away, the girls screamed in terror.
That crash, however, seemed to be the culmination of the outburst, for from then on the rain began to slacken, and the thunder died away in muttered rumblings and the lightning became paler and paler until it was only a faint, shimmering light.
Then the dark sky cleared and the sun came out, shining through the storm-riven clouds and warming the ground and trees which were dripping from the vigorous bath.
“We got home just in time,” commented Cora, as they looked out on the ceasing storm. “A little longer on the mountain and we would have been drenched.”
“That cave was a find,” commented Jack. “I want to see what’s in it.”
“Probably nothing more than a hole in the side of the mountain,” commented Bess.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” voiced Walter. “I wonder if Mr. Floyd knows anything about it?”
It developed that the caretaker did not, though he said there were several small mountain caves in that section, and this was probably one of them that he had not chanced upon.