“Why, sitting here on our haunches, rejoicing in the genial warmth of the fire—over-genial, I should call it, as it’s blistering my knees—and having no sentry out to see that the scoundrels don’t pounce down on us by surprise.”
“There’s no more risk in it,” answered Tom, confidently, “than in wearing socks, or playing dominoes, or trying to trace out the features of the man in the moon.”
“But why not, Tom?”
“Because the scoundrels down there are all dead—dead drunk, I mean—and they have all they can do just now in sleeping it off.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, entirely sure. You saw how they were drinking—half a pint of rum at a dose, repeated every five minutes. Well, they kept that up as long as they could find the way to their mouths. They had emptied the demijohn before you fellows left, and not being satisfied, they got out a keg of the fiery stuff, had a rough and tumble fight over some question relating to it, beat each others’ faces into something very much like Hamburger steaks, and then decided to let the keg arbitrate the dispute. Four or five of them had been arbitrated into a comatose state before I left, another was trying to sing something about ‘Melinda,’ setting forth that he had ‘seen her at the windah,’ and was prepared to give his hat and boots if he could ‘only have been dah.’ The rest were drunkenly silent as they sat there by an open dark lantern which they had forgotten to close, I suppose, and drinking rum from tin cups whenever they could remember to do so. They will give nobody any trouble to-night.”
“But, Tom,” interposed Dick, “how do you know it was rum they were drinking?”
“Now, see here,” said Tom, “I’d like to know who’s telling this story. If I’m the one the rest of you had better let me tell it in my own way. I was going to begin at the beginning and tell it straight through, but your intrusive questions have switched me off the track. Now listen, and I’ll tell you all I know and how I know it, and what I think of it, and what I think you think of it, and all the rest of it.”
“Go ahead, Tom!” said Cal; “I’ll keep the peace for you; you’ll bear me witness that I haven’t spoken a word since you began. Go on!”
“All right,” said Tom. “I thought you were about to give us a disquisition when you began to say that, but you didn’t, so I’ll forgive you. Well, you see when you fellows heard me moving out there in the thicket and thought I was instituting a retreat, I was only changing my base, as the military men say. I had seen something that aroused my curiosity, and my curiosity is like a baby after midnight—if you once rouse it, you simply can’t coax it to go to sleep again.”