“Nay, let the boy do it,” said Dinny, “and you come and sit down here. I’ll soon show you a thing as would make the sergeant stare.”
Dinny drew a large knife from his pocket, and a flint and steel. The latter he returned, and, taking the flint, he laid his open knife on the thwart of the boat, and with the flint jagged the edge of the blade all along into a rough kind of saw.
“There!” he said; “that will do. That iron’s as soft as cheese.”
This last was a slight Hibernian exaggeration; but as Mary hoisted sail, and Abel put out an oar to steer, while the little vessel glided swiftly over the sunlit sea, Dinny began to operate upon the ring round one of Bart’s ankles, sawing away steadily, and with such good effect that at the end of an hour he had cut half through, when, by hammering the ring together with the butt of the musket, the half-severed iron gave way, and one leg was free.
“Look at that, now!” said Dinny, triumphantly, and with an air of satisfaction that took away the last doubts of his companions. “Now, thin, up wid that other purty foot!” he cried; and, as the boat glided rapidly toward the west, he sawed away again, with intervals of re-jagging at the knife edge, and soon made a cut in the second ring.
“Keep her a little farther from the shore, Abel,” said Mary, in a warning tone, as the boat sped westward.
“Ye needn’t mind,” said Dinny, sawing away; “the inhabitants all along here are a moighty dacent sort of folk, and won’t tell where we’re gone. They’re not handsome, and they’ve got into a bad habit o’ wearing little tails wid a moighty convanient crook in ’em to take howld of a tree.”
“Monkeys?” said Mary, eagerly.
“Yes, Masther Jack, monkeys; and then there’s the shmiling crockidills, and a few shnakes like ships’ masts, and some shpotted cats. There’s nobody else lives here for hundreds o’ miles.”
“Then you are safe, Abel,” said Mary, with the tears standing in her eyes.