“Take an inch, Dan; take an ell. You being a sailor, take as many fathoms as you like, only find my gun.”
“That’s just what I’m going to try and do, sir, and old Buck’s knife too, if I can; so if you will allow me, gentlemen, I’ll just make a propogishum.”
“Go ahead then, and be smart, before old Brown gets here. Yonder he comes.”
“Well, it’s just this way, gentlemen. I say, let’s get our two niggers here, and don’t let them think for a moment as we ’spects them, but drum it into their heads somehow as something’s missing. Teach ’em same as you would a dog, and show them a rifle and a knife, and tell them to seek. I don’t quite know how you are going to make them understand as it’s a black who crawled up in the night, but I daresay you two clever gents will manage that.”
“And what then?” cried the two boys, in a breath.
“What then, sir? Strikes me as them two, the little ’un and the big ’un, will turn theirselves into traps, and we shall wake up some morning to find that they have got the thief as they caught in the night.”
“Well done, mate! I didn’t think you had got it in you,” growled Buck.
“Bravo!” cried the boys together. “Splendid!”
“Now then,” said Mark, “the next thing will be to take the two blacks into our confidence. Hold hard; there’s Brown.”