ry on any sort of conversation, what with all
the racket around them. The wind blew, the rain fell in sheets, and the
thunder boomed so continuously that one deep-toned roll hardly died
away before there would come another crash that made everybody start.

Still they were a thankful lot of boys as they lay under the ledges and
counted the minutes creep past.

"We've managed to keep our jackets tolerably dry after all," announced
Josh, at a time when there happened to be a little slackening of the
gale; "and that's what everybody couldn't have done under the same
conditions."

"Well, I should say not," another scout declared; "I know lots of
fellows who think themselves extra smart around town, and yet put them
up here and they'd either have been knocked out hiding under a tree
that was struck, or else soaked through to the skin."

"It takes scouts to figure things out when the supreme test comes,"
said Josh.

"Yes, _some_ scouts," added Felix, drily; as much as to tell Josh not
to plume himself too highly, because this was not his bright thought.

A more terrific peal of thunder than any they had yet heard except that
one outburst, stopped their talking for a brief time.

"I really believe the old storm is coming back to try it all over
again!" cried Billy Button, in dismay.

"They often seem to do that," remarked another boy. "That has puzzled
me more'n I can tell. What's the explanation, Mr. Witherspoon?"

"Well, as near as I can say," replied the scout master, "it's something
like this. Most storms have a regular rotary movement as well as their
forward drift. On that account a hurricane at sea has a core or center,
where there is almost a dead clam."

"Yes, I've read about that," interrupted Josh. "Sea captains always
mention it when they've found themselves in the worst of a big blow.
It slackens up, and then comes on again worse than ever."

"But always from exactly the opposite quarter," the scout master
continued.

"You can see how this is, for the wind coming from the east up to the
time the core of the gale strikes them, is from the west after the
center has passed by. We may be about to get the other side of this
little storm now."

"Listen to it roaring, up on the mountain?" cried Horace.

"I wonder what those other fellows are doing about now?" Josh was heard
to say, in a speculative way.

"Of course you mean Tony Pollock and his crowd," observed Tom. "Unless
they've been as lucky as we w