I don’t know what time it really was. Maybe it was three o’clock, but if it was, three is a heap earlier than I ever imagined it could be. Why, it was as dark as midnight. We stumbled around and found the road. It was about a mile up the road to the bridge, and maybe a half a mile across the stream to the lake. We came near missing it altogether in the dark, and we would have if it hadn’t been for the sound of a frog splashing into the water. We turned off and fumbled down to the shore, and there we were. We might as well have been home, for we never could find the boat uncle told me about in that blackness, so we just sat down and grumbled. It was pretty uncomfortable, I want to tell you. All the fun there is crouching down in the dark on the shore of a lake you can hardly see, with your feet wet and shivers chasing each other up and down your back, can be put in your ear.
“Who thought of this?” Tallow growled.
“Binney,” says Plunk.
“Who wanted to get up at two?” I asked right back, and they didn’t have another word to say.
We huddled around, all fixed to quarrel. It got a little lighter, but not enough to do any good, and by that time we were hungry. Tallow mentioned he was, and Mark—the only one in the crowd to think ahead—pulled a bag out of his pocket with sandwiches and store-cookies in it. We gobbled them and felt a bit better.
Just as it began to get sort of grayish we heard wagon-wheels in the road. Right off Mark started a game. He figured we’d feel better if we had something to think about, I guess.
“Hist!” says he. “The p-p-pirates!”
We all kept so still you couldn’t even hear us breathe.
“If they f-f-find us here in their lair,” says Mark, “it’ll be all day with us. Have you got the diamonds s-s-safe, Binney?” he whispered.
“Yes,” says I, feeling of some pebbles in my pocket, “I got ’em.”