“No,” said Will, “and I pity the fellow that ever makes that particular mistake.”
“We’ll never tell him,” said Constant. “If we did, we mightn’t be able to deliver our prisoner.”
[CHAPTER XVII]
AT ANCHOR
Phil had sent two telegrams,—one to the authorities at Memphis, and the other to the plundered bank in Cincinnati. In each he had announced his captures,—the man and the funds,—and in each he had asked that officers to arrest and persons to identify the culprit should be waiting at Memphis on the arrival of the flatboat.
On his return to the flatboat he felt himself so excited and sleepless that he sent his comrades below to sleep and by turns to watch the prisoner. He would himself remain on duty on deck all night. As the night wore away, the boy thought out all the possibilities, for he felt that for any miscarriage in this matter he would be solely responsible.
Among the possibilities was this: that should the flatboat arrive at Memphis before some one could get there from Cincinnati to identify the prisoner, he might be discharged for want of such identification. It would take a day or two to send men by rail from Cincinnati to Memphis, while the fierce current of this Mississippi flood promised to take the flatboat thither within less than twenty hours.
After working out all the probabilities in his mind as well as he could, Phil called below for all his comrades to come to the sweeps. He did not tell them his purpose; they were too sleepy even to ask. But studying the “lay of the land” on either side, he steered the flatboat into a sort of pocket on the Tennessee shore, and to the bewilderment of his comrades, ordered the anchor cast overboard.