The citadel was about fifty feet square and three stories high. The back of it was built on spiles in the lake. One side was toward the hotel, the other side faced out toward a sort of strait that connected the two parts of the lake, and between the house and the water was a little patch of land with some tall hemlocks on it. In front was nothing but a dock about twenty feet broad. And there you are.
Mark came back with his plan for mounting guard in his head.
“It’ll be necessary to have t-t-two guards at once,” says he, “and you’ll have to p-patrol regular beats. One beat will be from the bridge around the front of the citadel to the end of the dock. The other will be around the r-r-rim of the island from the dock to the back end of the house. D-durin’ the day turns will be one hour long. At night they’ll be t-three hours, so as to give each fellow a chance to sleep a little betweentimes. There’s f-five of us, which will give one man a chance to sleep all night every night and get r-r-rested up.”
“How’ll we see at night?” says Plunk.
“F-fires,” says Mark. “We’ll b-build two good fires, one in front and one back by the trees.”
“And what’ll the alarm be?” says Binney.
“Anythin’ ’ll be the alarm. Just make the n-noise you think of first. So long’s it’s loud enough it’ll do all right.”
So far as I was concerned I guess nobody had any complaint to make about my alarms. If they were as loud as I was scared every time I had to make an alarm I’ll bet they were heard on the Pacific coast. And I had to make them, too. Don’t forget about that. There were alarms enough to satisfy anybody’s appetite.
CHAPTER XIII
“I don’t see,” says I, “why we couldn’t just as well pile into a boat and row to the far end of the lake. From there we could make tracks for town and save all this bother.”