“Don’t make no d-difference. It’s my p-place to go first,” says Mark, and that settled it. It was just as if he was going into real danger, and he almost believed he was. That was the way he would have acted, anyhow. You never saw him dodge or try to get out of doing his share and more than his share whenever a pinch came.
So we all took off our clothes and did them up in bundles, and we got us each a bush, and Mark started off. It was only about a hunderd-foot swim, but there was quite some current. Now maybe Mark Tidd looked like a bush floating down-stream to an Injun on the island, but to me on the shore he looked more like a hippopotamus carrying home his dinner. Anyhow, he got across, and then came Tallow, and then me, and Binney last. We all got there safe and sound and pulled on our clothes and held a council of war.
Mark laid out a lot of plans about how we would surround the Injun chief and pounce on him before he could get his hand onto his tomahawk, and how we would tie him to a tree and all that. But I says:
“Hain’t it a good idee to find out if he’s here before we catch him? ’Cause if we pounce when there hain’t nobody to pounce onto we kind of waste work.”
“He’s got to be here,” says Mark. “Everythin’ p-p-points that way. It wouldn’t be reasonable for him to be any place else.”
“It’s all right to reason somethin’ out,” says I, “and maybe you can do it and feel sure in your mind it’s so; but for me, jest give me one peek at George Piggins and I’ll believe he’s here.”
“Listen,” says Mark. “I kin p-p-prove it easy. Jest start out and skirmish around the island till you f-f-find his boat. It’ll be close to the shore, because he’s too lazy to pull it up far. When you find the boat you’ll know he’s here, won’t you?”
“I’ll feel reasonably certain,” says I.
“Then scoot,” says he.
I took off as fast as I could go—that is, as fast as I could crawl on my stummick, for Mark said I had to go that way. Well, I hadn’t gone far, sort of poking my head in front of me regardless, when all of a sudden it brought up against a plank with a bump that made me see a Fourth of July celebration, and when I got so I could see what was going on, why, it was George’s boat! Sure enough Mark had reasoned it out right. I might have known he would.