The squall had quite gone over and the sun began to shine. It seemed a cruel thing--to drown out there in the sunlight. And yet the buffeting little waves, kicked up by the wind-flaw, were so hard to swim through. Had the waves been of a really serious size the struggle would have been less difficult for the two girls. They could have ridden over the big waves and managed to keep their heads above water; but every once in a while a cross wavelet would slap their faces, and every time one did so Bess managed to get a mouthful of water. "Oh! what will papa do?" moaned Bess. And Wyn knew what the poor girl meant. She was her father's close companion and chum. The other girls in the Lavine family were smaller and their mother was devoted to them; but Bess and Mr. Lavine were pals all the time. Bess repeated this exclamation over and over again, until Wyn thought she should shriek in nervous despair. She realized quite fully that their chance for life was very slim indeed; but moaning and groaning about it would not benefit them or change the situation in the slightest degree. Wyn kept her head and saved her breath for work. She raised up now and then, breast high in the water, and tried to scan the shore. Suddenly the sun revealed Green Knoll Camp to her--bathing the little hillock, with the tents upon it, in the full strength of his rays. But it was quite two miles away. Wyn could see no moving figures upon the knoll. Nor could her friends see her and Bess struggling in the water at that distance. If their overset had not been sighted, Mrs. Havel and the four other members of the Go-Ahead Club would not be aware of their peril. And, Wyn believed, the swamping of the canoes could only have been observed through a glass. Had anybody along shore been watching the two canoes as the squall struck the craft and overset them? In that possibility, she thought, lay their only hope of rescue. CHAPTER XIV THE REPULSE As the squall threatened in the northwest, it had been observed by many on the shores of Lake Honotonka--and many on the lake itself, as well. Sailing craft had run for havens. The lake could be nasty at times and there might be more than a capful of wind in the black cloud that spread so quickly over a sky that had--an hour before--been of azure. Had the two girls from Green Knoll Camp been observed by the watermen as they embarked in their canoes at Meade's Forge, they might have been warned against venturing far from the shore in those cockleshells. But Wynifred and Bessie had not been observed, so were not warned. The squall had come down so quickly that they were not much to be blamed. It had startled other people on the lake--and those much more used to its vagaries. In a cove on the north shore a small cat-rigged boat had been drifting since noon-time, its single occupant having found the fishing very good. This fisher was the boatman's daughter, Polly Jarley.