“An’ I am with ye. I’ll like to make that man feel the wake of my two fists, and he wouldn’t dare to cane me after that.”
“I want to secure twenty men or more that I can trust, seafaring men. You must be one of them,” he continued.
“I plan to go down to Warwick Neck, and to go over to the island with my picked men in the night on whale-boats. The General and his guard are at the Overing House on the north end of the island, down by the sea.
“I plan to pass through the British fleet in the night with muffled oars, to land near Prescott’s headquarters, and——”
“Whoop!” said Dennis rudely, “to carry him off before he has time to put on his clothes. You hand him over to me, and I would get him back down to the boats as easy as a chicken-hawk with a chicken. He would not even ask me to take off my hat. Put me down as one of the picked men.”
“You will meet me at the wharf on Warwick Neck on the afternoon of July 10th.”
“That I will. You are a brave man and have the spirit of the times. That man will know what are the rights of men if I ever get him between these two fists. What did Providence make these hands for?”
Dennis opened them and swung them around like a windmill.
Dennis hurried back to Lebanon. He found the Governor there, and said: