“Why, won’t it go in?”
“Go! It wouldn’t go in two boats.”
I came down the plank. “Well, let’s eliminate.”
We eliminated. We took out extra shoes and coats and “town clothes,” we cut down as far as we dared, and expressed a big bundle home. The rest we got into two sailor’s dunnage bags, one waterproof, the other nearly so, and one big water-tight metal box. Then there were the guns, and the provisions, and the charts in a long tin tube, and there was a lantern—a clumsy thing, which we lashed to a seat. It was always in the way and proved of very little use, but we thought we ought to take it.
While we worked, some loungers gathered on the wharf above and watched us with that tolerant curiosity that loungers know so well how to assume. As we got in and took up our [pg 187] oars, one of them called out, “Now, if you only had a little motor there in the stern, you’d be all right.”
“Don’t want one,” said Jonathan.
“What? Why not?”
“Go too fast.”
“Eh? What say?”
“Go—too—fast.”