"I'll do it!" almost shouted the Prince. Then he clapped his hand over his mouth and looked, pop-eyed with apprehension, toward the nurse.
"Then, good-bye and God bless you," said Truxton. "I must be off. Your Uncle Jack is waiting for me, up there in the hills."
Bobby's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Mr. King, please give him my love and make him hurry back. I—I need him awful!"
Truxton found Mr. Hobbs in a state bordering on collapse.
"I say, Mr. King, it's all right to say we'll go, but how the deuce are we to do it? My word, there's no more chance of getting out of the—"
"Listen, Hobbs: we're going to swim out," said Truxton. He was engaged in stuffing food into a knapsack. Colonel Quinnox and Haddan had been listening to Hobbs's lamentations for half an hour, in King's room.
"Swim? Oh, I say! By hokey, he's gone clean daffy!" Hobbs was eyeing him with alarm. The others looked hard at the speaker, scenting a joke.
"Not yet, Hobbs. Later on, perhaps. I had occasion to make a short tour of investigation this afternoon. Doubtless, gentlemen, you know where the water-gate is, back of the Castle. Well, I've looked it over—and under, I might say. Hobbs, you and I will sneak under those slippery old gates like a couple of eels. I forgot to ask if you can swim."
"To be sure I can. Under the gates? My word!"
"Simple as rolling off a log," said Truxton carelessly. "The Cascades and Basin of Venus run out through the gate. There is a space of at least a foot below the bottom of the gate, which hasn't been opened in fifty years, I'm told. A good swimmer can wriggle through, d'ye see? That lets him out into the little canal that connects with the river. Then—"