He didn’t have to drop that stone on the bottom of the boat but once. Two planks busted.
Mark climbed into the canoe with me, and we dug in our paddles.
“H-h-hurry,” says he; but he didn’t need to tell me. I was hurrying as hard as I could. I wanted to get as much distance between Jiggins & Co. and us as possible. They were nice men, but I didn’t want any more of their company till we’d had a little chat with Uncle Hieronymous.
For the first time I had a chance to draw a breath and do a little thinking. Then it began to dawn on me what Mark had done. All in a second he’d seen his chance, and just as quick he took advantage of it. I would have sat around that boat-house all day without scheming to shut up the enemy in it, but not Mark. It didn’t matter what he saw, he always tried to fit it into his plans. I suppose he began studying about that boat-house as soon as it came into sight, and by the time we landed his plan was all ready.
Wasn’t it easy, though? All he had to do was get Jiggins and Collins in there alone. That was all. It doesn’t look very hard, and it didn’t seem to be hard. But the brainy part was thinking it up in a second and working it when there wasn’t a chance in the world the enemy would be expecting anything.
Take Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd by and large, and it looks to me like he was considerable of a general.
CHAPTER XVI
From now on so many things happened, one right onto the heels of the other, that it’s a little confusing to remember them all and get them in the right places. It doesn’t seem as if I stopped to breathe for about a month. Only, the whole thing was over in a night and less than a day. But it was a night and a day a fellow couldn’t forget if he lived to be a million years old.
That first thing that happened was the noise. Mark and I had been paddling about three quarters of an hour when we heard it first.
“Bridge ahead,” I says. “Hear that rig goin’ across?”