"There's got to be time to lay the flooring, unless you all want to sleep in water to-night," Dick insisted. "Harry, just break your back with the loads of wood that you bring in. I'll fill all the buckets with water." In ten minutes more everything had been carried inside the tent. Big drops of rain were beginning to patter down. "We've everything ready just in time to the minute," Tom Reade observed with a satisfied chuckle. "Not everything quite ready," Prescott retorted. "Tom, if you're going to grow up to be an engineer there's one thing more you should see the need of." "What?" challenged Reade blankly. "Get the pick and shovel! You and I will do it. Let the rest get in under shelter!" Standing in the rain, Tom and Dick hastily dug two ditches at either end of the tent. These ditches were no creditable engineering jobs, but they would, at need, carry a good deal of water down the slope. By this time the rain was falling heavily. In the distance heavy thunder volleyed, and the sky was growing blacker every minute. "One more job," called Dick. "Dave and Greg, tumble out with the shelter flap!" This was a great sheet of canvas that had to be fastened in place over the tent roof, and at a different pitch. "We'll be drowned before we get the shelter flap in place," grumbled Tom. "And we might as well be out in the rain, if we don't have it up," Dick retorted. "Open her up! Now, then---up with it!" The shelter flap was placed with difficulty, for now the wind was driving across the country, blowing everything before it. The other two boys leaped out to help their chums. The shelter flap was made secure at last, the ropes being made fast to the surrounding trees. By this time the wind was blowing at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The sky was nearly as black as on a dark night, while the rain was coming down "like another Niagara," as Harry Hazelton put it. "We don't care whether we have a dry tent or not, now," laughed Dan Dalzell, as the six boys made a break for cover. "We're soaking, anyway, and a little more water won't hurt." "I'll get a fire going in the stove," Dick smiled. "Soon after that we'll be dry enough---if the tent holds." The stove was already in place, a sheet-iron pipe running up one of the tent walls and out through a circular opening in the canvas of the side wall opposite from the wind. While Dick was making the fire, Tom Reade filled, trimmed and lighted the two lanterns. "Listen to the storm!" chuckled Prescott. "But we're comfy and cheery enough. Now, peel off your outer clothes and spread them on the campstools to dry by the fire. We'll soon be feeling as cheery as though we were traveling in a Pullman car." Within a short time all six were dry and happy. The lightning had come closer and closer, until now it flashed directly overhead, followed by heavy explosions of thunder.