“Not a chance. This boat been guarded every second. Nobody could get aboard without being seen.”
“Anyhow,” says Mr. Topper, “they’re gone, and we’d better take advantage of it.”
“We’ll skin out at crack of dawn. And if they get sight of us again it won’t be my fault.”
So we went to bed, and for half an hour we laid awake while Naboth and Rameses III argued all over the place about what became of the pillar of salt that Lot’s wife turned into. Naboth claimed it was still standing on the very spot, and Rameses III said he saw it in a museum in New York, and he said Lot’s wife was a powerful homely woman, if the salt was any real likeness of her, and he felt like Lot was probably mighty glad to get rid of her. When they got to that point I dozed off.
It was hardly light when we were waked up. Naboth was getting up the anchor; the engine was running, and just as Catty and I got on deck, we heard Mr. Browning throw in the clutch. Mr. Topper fired our cannon in salute to the Yacht Club, and we moved out of the harbor into Buzzards Bay.
It was a little misty and we couldn’t see far, but Mr. Browning was navigating, and had all of us standing forward to look out for spars and buoys and such-like. We headed right across the bay. Pretty soon the sun came out, and a little breeze came along, and the mists disappeared. A long ways ahead we could see land, and the chart said it was Cuttyhunk, with bigger land off the port bow, and a tiny island called Penikese to starboard.
“That’s the leper colony,” says Mr. Browning.
“Real lepers—like in the Bible?” says Catty.
“Regular lepers. The government keeps them there—like on that island in the Sandwich group.”
“Can we see them?” says Catty.