As they sped on, nobody asked Tom what the occasion for his hurry was. He seemed still out of breath for one thing, and for another the rush of the dory’s rail through the water made it difficult to hear words spoken in an ordinary tone, for though the wind was steadily freshening, Dick refused to spill even a capful of it. He was sailing now for speed, and he wanted to get all he could out of the wind. But chief among the reasons for not asking questions was the instinctive courtesy of Tom’s comrades. They realized that he had discovered something of importance, and they felt that he ought to have the pleasure of himself reporting it to the commanding officer of the cutter before telling anybody else about it.
In the same spirit, when the dory was laid along the cutter’s side, they held back to let Tom be the first to climb to the deck, where the lieutenant was awaiting him.
Tom’s excitement was gone, now that he had accomplished his purpose of reaching the cutter before dark—a thing he had feared he might not do. His report was made calmly, therefore, and with smiles rippling over his face—smiles of rejoicing over his success, and other smiles, prompted by recollections of what seemed to him the humorous aspects of what he had seen and done.
The report was utterly informal, of course; Tom was not used to military methods.
“They are all there, Lieutenant,” he began, “but they won’t be there long after it grows dark. They’re preparing to leave to-night, as early as they can get the drunken ones among them sober enough to sit on a thwart and hold an oar.”
“How do you know that, Tom?”
“Why, I heard the boss brute say so while he was rousing one of the drunkest of them into semi-consciousness by kicking him in the ribs with force enough to break the whole basket I should think. I won’t repeat his language—it wasn’t fit for publication—but the substance of it was that the victim of his boot blows had ‘got to git a move onto him’ because ‘them boats has got to git away from here jest as soon as it’s good and dark.’”
“Why, were you near enough to hear?”
“Oh, yes. I wasn’t more than ten paces away from the pair at the time that interesting conversation occurred.”