“Look here!” said the man, in the same voice, crouching beside Allan, “will you be pleasant and sociable, or must I—?” and he caught Allan by the neck with his thin hands, and struck the boy’s head against the centre-board.
Allan struggled to loosen the man’s hands, and then gasped, “What do you want?”
“Looking out into the fog.”
“What do I want? I want liberty. That’s what I want. I want it so bad that I have been three days and three nights in this skiff, watching my chance, since I got out of there,” and he pointed up the river.
“They are watching and they will get me unless I can get into New York—understand me?” and the man caught Allan by the shoulder, “unless I can get into New York—into New York with other clothes! Do you understand?—with other clothes.”
“I haven’t any clothes for you,” stammered Allan.
“You haven’t, hey? Stand up,” and the man enforced his order by half lifting Allan to his feet. At this Allan saw that, although the man had a large head, he was no taller than himself, and wasted by imprisonment, hunger, and exposure.
“No clothes, hey?” pursued the man, with something that seemed almost like a smile. “No clothes?—the very thing! Quick now, the fog helps. Quick!”
“What do you mean?” demanded Allan, who began to understand painfully well what the man did mean, and who also had begun to cast about for some plan of defence. McConnell crouched in the stern, stupefied. The Arabella had drifted, and the untethered skiff with it, out of sight of the shore. They were shut in by the fog.