“Thad, there’s somebody coming on a gallop up there!” announced Giraffe just then; “and I do believe it’s a mounted soldier in the bargain!”
“Oh! thunder!” gurgled Bumpus, almost collapsing; “that’s always the way things go. We get just so far, and then the string pulls us back again.”
“Don’t let on that you see him,” said Thad, quickly. “The old man is pretty deaf I should say from the way you shouted at him, Giraffe. He doesn’t hear the man calling. Now, if he is so busy pushing off that he fails to look up, we ought to be half way out in the stream before that horse gets down to the bank.”
“He’s coming with a rush, I tell you!” said Giraffe, who had better opportunities for seeing than any of the others, so that it did appear as though at times it paid to have a neck that would stretch.
The ferryman had now thrown off the last rope and was stooping down to take hold of the setting pole. Another minute or so would decide the question.
Bumpus was so worked up that he could not keep still. As usual, he advanced some wild idea, for while not as a rule fertile in expedients there were times when it seemed as though that slow brain of the stout boy worked furiously.
“There, hang the luck, fellows, the ferryman has seen him!” burst out Bumpus, in the deepest disgust; “he’s going to wait up for the soldier, and take him aboard.”
“Our cake will be dough,” added Giraffe, gloomily, “if it happens that the man on horseback comes from the town where we got turned back, and orders us to go back with him, to be shut up in a German dungeon. I’ve heard a lot about what terrible nasty places those fortress prisons are, but I never thought I’d be in danger of finding out for myself.”
“Do we have to give in so tamely as all that?” asked Bumpus, with a spurt of spirit that would have become a warrior; “suppose now he does try to browbeat us, ought four husky scouts from good old America get down and kiss the shoes of just one bullying German soldier, because he wears a helmet on his head. Thad, it’s up to you to say the word, and we’ll all jump on him!”
“Don’t be so rash, Bumpus!” Giraffe warned him, while Thad said: