“No-o-o-o!” cried Stan angrily. “That I wasn’t. I was thinking of the stink-pots.”
“Well, of course they’ll stink, as ’tis their nature to,” said Blunt merrily.
“Of course they will; but burning pitch—it will stick.”
“Pitch has a habit of doing so, my son,” said Blunt mockingly.
“Oh, you don’t see what I mean,” cried Stan excitedly. “The warehouse—wood—they’ll set the whole place on fire and burn us out.”
Phee-ew!
Blunt gave forth a long-drawn whistle.
“By Saint Jingo, the great fighting-man,” he cried, “I never thought of that Stan Lynn, you’re a regular Todleben—a prince of engineering defence. Why, of course! They’d roast us out, and it would hurt horribly, without reckoning how they would poke us back with their tridents to go on cooking if we tried to run away.”
“You see now, then?” said Stan.
“See? Yes. I can almost feel. I am glad you thought of that. All right. We’ll have half-a-dozen casks in the middle of the big office, and I’ll set a line of men to work across the wharf with buckets to fill the casks from the river.”