“You’re not in Bellville yet,” replied Bayard, in a voice that was rendered almost indistinct with passion. “Keep down, I say. We give you fair warning that the first one who shows himself will get his head broken.”
Wilson, not in the least daunted by this threat, seized the uppermost log of the partition with both hands, and began scrambling out of the hole; but scarcely had the top of his hat appeared in view when three heavy ears of corn, propelled with all the force that sinewy arms could give them, shot up from below—one passing within an inch of his head, another knocking off his hat, and a third striking him on the shoulder and sending him back into the room. He landed on his feet on the bureau, but would have fallen if Chase had not caught him in his arms.
“Are you hurt?” asked the latter, in alarm.
“Not in the least, only astonished,” replied his companion. “They are too sharp to allow us to come to close quarters with them. I didn’t think they would resort to a trick like that, and I am satisfied now that we can’t go out that way. I would as soon face bullets as those ears of corn. We must try strategy.”
“And we must be in a hurry about it, too,” replied Chase, “for we have already wasted a good deal of valuable time. Coulte may return at any moment.”
“We’re in a bad scrape,” said Wilson, beginning to get discouraged.
“Yes, we are; but still we are better off than Fred Craven. He’s in a fix, I tell you; and he got into it by trying to help me. He’s a prisoner on board——”
A single word we utter, or an act that we perform, is sometimes recalled to our minds when we least expect it, and not unfrequently makes great changes in our prospects for the future. Chase did not have time to say any more about the prisoner he had left on board the schooner, but what little he did say was remembered by Wilson, who afterward repeated it to one who instantly became interested in Chase’s welfare, and succeeded in getting him out of the worst predicament he had ever got into. He was going to tell how he had met Featherweight, and to repeat all that had passed between them, when Bayard called out: