Mark Tidd's Citadel

by Clarence Budington Kelland

“When we get a chance,” says I, “we’d better carry the rest of the grub across the bridge.”

“No,” says he; “they’d see us and suspect somethin’. We’ll have to s-s-sneak over what we can; but there’s enough for a couple of weeks there now.”

“How about cookin’-things?” says I.

“They’re not there. But we can take ’em in a second. Always have them piled together ready to grab. That’ll be your job, Tallow. Remember. At the first alarm drop everything and forget everything else. Just g-g-grab those dishes and scoot.”

“All right,” says I. “Here goes to get ’em ready now.”

And now came the discovery of Motu by The Man Who Will Come. It was by nobody’s fault unless it was Motu’s own, but if what he did was a fault, then I should like to be committing faults like it all my life. We had all gotten to like Motu, for he was so pleasant and gentlemanly and patient, but that was all. We didn’t feel toward him like we felt toward one another, and it wasn’t to be expected. But from that time on he belonged. It was the first time a boy had ever been let into our crowd of four, and the last time—but this boy deserved it. The thing Motu did was not only brave, for it isn’t such a big thing to be brave, but it was self-sacrificing, which is a big thing. He not only did a brave thing in an emergency when quick thinking and quick acting had to be done, but, with his eyes open, he risked capture by the Japanese, with all the important results that would have come from it. Without a moment’s hesitation he risked everything for one of us, and I hope that all the rest of our lives we will be just as quick to risk everything for him. This was the way of it:

Plunk and Binney came in from fishing. They had been out in the canoe, and luck had been right in the boat with them, for they had a dandy string of bass and pickerel. Plunk got out with the fish and carried them over to the live-box. For some reason or another Binney pushed off again all alone and paddled out about twenty feet from shore. I guess at the start he had it in mind to go somewhere, but changed his plan. He stopped where the water was about four feet deep, and then, like a little idiot, leaned over the side of the canoe to wash his face.

He washed it, all right, and the rest of him with it. Just as if it had been alive and wanted to get rid of Binney, that canoe tipped over. Ker-flop! it went. Binney just had time to let out a yell. I came to the kitchen door, where I had been putting the cooking-dishes in shape, and saw him take the dive. Other folks heard the yell, for out of the tail of my eye I saw The Man Who Will Come step into sight about two hundred yards down the road and stand looking.

I expected Binney to come right up and wade ashore, but he didn’t. I couldn’t understand it, and my mind didn’t work fast enough to figure what had happened. Mark was across the bridge in the citadel, so he wasn’t there to help any, and if it hadn’t been for Motu I guess our crowd of four would have been cut down to three and a pretty sorrowful three. But Motu was there, and the day will never come when I stop being thankful for it.

While I stood there like a big booby Motu came rushing out of the hotel and plunged into the water. He couldn’t swim, either, but fortunately the water wasn’t over his head between him and Binney. He surged and jumped and plowed his way to where the canoe floated, bottom up—floated and bobbed and wiggled as Binney struggled under it where he had got caught somehow.