That night Mark drew out his map all in ink, showing everything, and you’ll find it here if you’re interested in the lay of the land around the Willis farm.
CHAPTER XII
It’s lucky the schools had been closed for two weeks on account of a diphtheria scare, for it’s hard to see how we could have got along if it hadn’t been that way. We had a whole week before us yet, and if we couldn’t get back Mr. Tidd’s turbine in seven days we couldn’t get it back at all. But we didn’t lose any time just because we had a little of it on hand. Mark Tidd was no time-loser.
Next morning he got me out of bed ’most as early as if it was the Fourth of July, and lugged me off down to my boat.
“We hain’t a-goin’ to row all the way up there again, I hope,” I says, because there were blisters on my hands, and my back was stiff, and, anyhow, rowing ten miles or so is a joke I don’t like to have played on me every day hand-running.
“We’ll just row as far as the c-c-cave,” Mark says. “Then we’ll git Sammy to row the rest of the way.”
“Oh,” says I, “Sammy. What good’ll Sammy be, I’d like to know. Might as well fetch along the Perkinses’ Jersey calf.”
“Sammy kin lift,” says Mark. “How’d you figger we was goin’ to git the turbine out of the house? Whistle to it and have it follow us like a d-d-dog?”
I didn’t have anything more to say. I might have known he wouldn’t take Sammy without some good reason.