“Sure,” says I, “but if we succeed, what do we get out of it?”
“Information,” says he.
“We’ve got that now. We know there’s a fence and men guarding it, and we know they’re going to dig for our treasure.”
He just shrugged his shoulders as if I was asking a foolish question, and maybe I was. Somehow I never know when I’m asking a foolish question. Lots of questions I think are all right get me into trouble, or get me laughed at. Asking questions isn’t safe. The best way is to keep your mouth shut and saw wood.
“We’ll make a map,” says he.
“It’s a map that got us into all this trouble,” says I.
“This one won’t,” he says, and off he went to the chart case and got out the chart of Nantucket, and then we found some paper and worked out all our military maneuvers so we would know just what to do every second.
“We’ll have to have a zero hour,” says he, “and then a time to reach every objective.”
“Fine,” says I, “but how’ll we see our watches in the dark. And besides,” says I, “we haven’t any watches.”
“Pretend we have,” says he, and that settled another point.