“You may say it is quite as sure a road to Gallows Hill as that would be,” I assented. “But come on: first we must leave the bed and this house exactly as we found them. Can you straighten and smooth the covers without a light?”
He said he could, and when he was through we drew the curtains, and took our route in reverse, misplacing nothing, and even staying to put the forced store-room lock back as we had found it. Once more in the garden, we kept to the graveled walk to show no tell-tale foot-prints; and at the fence we were careful to place the fallen board precisely as it had lain before we had kicked it aside to gain our entrance.
Five minutes later, we had dodged the sentry again, and had lowered ourselves cautiously to the river brink, where our boat was drawn out. Watching our chance against the pacing sentry, we floated the little craft silently, loaded it with stones enough to kill its buoyancy, and filled it almost to the gunwale with water. Then we made the painter fast to a rock at the river’s edge, pushed the boat out into deep water, and sank it with a quick jerk on the rope.
“I should have sent it adrift, and no more said,” commented the sergeant. “And I don’t see yet why you didn’t, Captain Dick,” he said.
“Never mind,” I rejoined. “You’re calling yourself a dead man, now, and so you needn’t worry with the ‘whys’—though I don’t mind explaining the present one. We’ve been at a good bit of trouble getting hold of that boat, and if we can make shift to keep the breath in our bodies for a few hours longer, we may need it again. That’s all. Now come with me, and obey your orders to the letter.”
Once again we scrambled up the bank, dodged the sleepy sentinel, passed to the street by a détour, and so came boldly to the front of the house we had broken into. Then I told Champe what we were to do.
“Make a complete soldier of yourself, now, Sergeant, and follow two steps behind me. We shall pace a sentry-beat up and down before the house from this on, until Arnold returns and finds us here. When he comes, you will salute and stand at parade, and look as weary as you can to back what I shall say to him. Mark time—march!”
XVII
MASKED BATTERIES
WITHOUT a word, Champe fell in two paces to the rear and caught the step, and thus began the weariest and I do think the most forlorn-hope vigil that was ever kept. For its patient keeping the sergeant deserves the greater credit, for I at least knew how I meant to try a desperate cast to bring us out of our looped gallows ropes, but Champe knew nothing save that I had formed a peg of some sort to hang a hope upon.
Tired and hungry, cold and cramped from our long confinement in the small boat as we were, the disappointment of the empty bed and bedroom had crushed and benumbed us. It was a dead wall from which courage refused to rebound; a pit to swallow the bravest resolution; a clog for our feet and shackles for our wrists. I do not speak for Champe; but for myself, if the meanest soldier in the British garrison had come to tell me I was his prisoner, I think his bare word would have made me tag along after him like a cowed spaniel.