"Oh, dear, dear!" sighed Ann. "Whatever will become of us now? We can't go back. Even if we could climb up the cliff, I'd never pass that dreadful Goose's house again, no, not for anything! But how are we going to get any farther without a boat?"
The False Hare pretended to wipe away a tear with the back of his paw. "No boat," he groaned. "Oh, dear, dear, dear—no boat!"
The faces of the three children brightened immediately, for they were beginning to understand his ways. "Hurrah!" cried Rudolf, waving his sword.
Sure enough, coming round a bend in the shore where the bushes had hidden it from their sight, was a small boat rowed by two white candy mice.
CHAPTER V
REAL LIVE PIRATES
After neatly and carefully turning up the bottoms of his trousers so that they should not get wet, the False Hare bounded on a rock that rose out of the water a few feet from shore, and stood ready to direct the landing of the boat. There was some sense in this, for certainly neither of the two mice was what could be called good oarsmen. One of them had just unshipped the little sail, and—not seeming to know what else to do with it—had cut it loose from the oar that served as a mast and wrapped it round and round his body, tying himself tightly with a piece of string.
Rudolf thought he had never in his life seen people in a boat do so many queer and unnecessary things in so short a time as those two mice did. They would stop rowing every few minutes and begin sweeping out the floor of their boat with a small broom, dusting seats, cushions, and oar-locks with a little feather duster tied with a pink ribbon. Then, after a few, rapid, nervous strokes at the oars, one or the other of them would pull his blade out of the water and polish it anxiously with his handkerchief, as if the important thing was to keep it dry. They would probably never have reached land that day if this had depended on their own efforts, but luckily the breeze was blowing them in the right direction.