“I don’t know yet,” says Mark. Now wasn’t that just like him! He knew there must be some way of getting water up there, and he was sure, if there was a way, he could find it. I wish I was as confident of myself as that. Maybe that’s why Mark is more thought of by folks than we are—because he never gives up, and because he knows if anybody can do a thing he can do it, too.
“We’ll have to r-r-retreat,” says he. “Maybe not at the next attack, but soon. If The Man uses the scheme I’m thinkin’ of we’ll retreat right sudden.”
“Will we have time,” says I, “to run up the stairs and pull them up after us?”
“I’ve f-f-fixed it so we will,” says he. You see, he’d thought it all out and was ready for anything. Of course he did make mistakes once in a while, like forgetting the water, but that was seldom. As Uncle Ike Bond said when he bought a citron because his bad eyesight made him think it was a muskmelon, “The best of us’ll make mistakes.”
“Now,” says Mark, “we want to know when to r-r-retreat. The two guards want to know b-because they’ve got farther to run. We’ll have to have a signal. The minute they hear it, or you hear it, forget everything but how to get to the t-t-top of those stairs the quickest way there is. The signal will be two screeches like this.” He showed us, and they were screeches for certain. A catamount would have been so proud of them he’d have jumped out of his skin. I guess a catamount that could yowl like that would be a sort of opera-singer among his folks, and they’d pay to hear him perform.
“Will that do?” says Mark.
“Do?” says I. “Yell like that and we won’t have to retreat. It’ll scare the Japs stiff so they’ll fall down-stairs and bu’st their necks.”
“All right,” says he. “You, Tallow, go and tell Motu and Binney.”
I went off to tell them. Motu was leaning on the railing, looking over, when I got there.
“How’s business?” says I.