XXI
TOM’S SCOUTING SCHEME
During breakfast the talk was, of course, about the smugglers and the chances of capturing them. In the course of it the lieutenant manifested some confusion or uncertainty of mind as to the exact position of the smugglers’ rendezvous and of the approaches to it.
“Won’t you please clear that up a little for me?” he asked Larry, after a vain attempt to clear it up for himself. “I don’t quite understand. Perhaps you can make it plain to my dullness.”
“Cal can do that better than any other member of our party,” Larry answered. “He was all about there three or four years ago, while the rest of us have been there only once. Besides, Cal has a nose for geographical detail, and he observes everything and remembers it. Explain the thing, Cal.”
“After such an introduction,” Cal replied, smiling, “I fear I shall not be able to live up to the character so generously attributed to me. Still, I think I can explain the thing; it is simple enough. May I have paper and a pencil?”
These were promptly furnished, and Cal made a hasty diagram.
“You see, Lieutenant, there is a little creek or estuary here. It is very narrow, especially at the mouth, and it runs inland for only a few miles. I can’t find it on the chart. Probably it is too insignificant to be noted there. You observe that it runs in a tortuous course, ‘slantwise’ to the shore, and keeping always within a comparatively short distance of the broad water, thus forming a sort of tongue of land.
“A little further along the shore of the broader water is another little estuary or cove, only a few hundred yards in its total length, but that length extends toward the creek on the other side, so that only about half a mile or less of swamp and thicket separates the two.