CHAPTER XV.
MAKING PORT IN A STORM "Did you ever see a blacker, more peculiar looking cloud coming than that one ?" demanded Tom Reade, as the high school boys emerged from the gloom of a long, narrow forest road into comparatively open country.
"Is it a coming storm, or an optical delusion ?" pondered Dick, halting and staring hard.
"It looks like pictures I've seen of water spouts," Greg declared.
"That's what it is," Dick replied quietly.

"Though I've never seen one before, it's hard to be fooled, for that chap looks just like his published photographs.

And look at that queer, brownish, half-yellowish sky back of it.

It certainly looks forbidding." "And we're going to have a stormy afternoon of it!" muttered Dave.
"The waterspout will go by to the north," Reade conjectured, studying the oddly-shaped, rapidly moving and twisting blackish cloud, "but we're going to be right in line with the main storm that is traveling with it." "And we've got to prepare against the weather, too!" Dick cried, with sudden realization.

"Fellows, the storm that is coming down on us isn't going to be any toy zephyr!" After leaving Ashbury the boys had decided to return to Gridley by a different road.
"There's the place for us, if we can make it!" cried Dick an instant later, pointing toward the slope.
"Dave, whip up the horse.