“Twenty-five dollars,” replied Enoch.
“That’s a good deal of money to pay out for nothing. The understanding was that we were to capture our vessel. If we had held to that, we could have got her for nothing.”
“And had a tug after us as soon as she could get up steam,” replied Enoch. “As I said before, this schooner is the only yacht in port. We couldn’t capture her without getting into a fight with Coleman, and if we had alarmed anybody, we should have had to run a race with the telegraph as well as with the tug. Now, remember what I say, Lester: We shall be in danger as long as we are this side of Oxford. Coleman knows that we are going to take French leave, and has promised to be as sly as he can in taking us on board the schooner; but no matter how carefully we cover up our trail, some sharp fellow like Mack will be sure to find it, and telegraph the authorities at Oxford to be on the look-out for us.”
“And Coleman himself will raise an outcry just as soon as he finds out that we have given him the slip,” added Jones.
“To be sure he will. I tell you, Brigham, we’re going to have a time of it, and you will have a chance to show just how smart you are. After we get the schooner everything will depend upon you. If you can take us safely past Oxford and out into the bay, you will be a leader worth having, and the boys will feel so much confidence in you that they will do anything you say.”
“And if I fail in my efforts to do that, they will lose what little confidence they have in me now, and put somebody else in my place,” said Lester to himself, as he and his friends moved off in different directions to hunt up the rest of the band and tell them of the plans that had been determined upon. “What am I to do now?”
There was a time when Don Gordon would have been delighted with such a prospect as this. The responsibility resting upon the captain of the schooner, and which was much too heavy a burden for Lester to bear, would have aroused all the combativeness in his nature, and made him determined to succeed in spite of every obstacle that could be thrown in his way. Lester, however, felt like backing out, and he would have done so if he had received the least encouragement from a single one of the band to whom he spoke that night. They were all strongly in favor of Enoch’s plan, and promised to be on hand at the appointed time with their money in their pockets.
“If you don’t want to go, now is the time to say so,” Lester ventured to suggest, hoping that some timid boy would take the hint and give him an excuse for staying behind himself; but the invariable reply was:
“I do want to go. I didn’t agree to this thing just to hear myself talk. If you fellows are going, I am going too.”