“Do you know of other boats?”
“Seems to me there’s more’n a hundred ’round here.”
“Where are they?”
Nathan began a list, mentioning this neighbor or that, and as often seeing among the collection the craft to which he referred, until finally he was forced to admit that to the best of his knowledge there were no more.
“I thought you knew of more than a hundred?” Corporal ’Lige cried fiercely.
“That’s what I reckoned myself; but when I come to figger ’em up they wasn’t there.”
“You come with us, an’ it may be we’ll find another.”
“What? After I’ve walked down to Castleton an’ back to-day, I go with you out rowin’? It’ll take more’n six shillings to hire me to do anything like that this night; besides you haven’t got time before the troops get here.”
“How near are they?” Corporal ’Lige asked in alarm.
“Well, they ought’er be showin’ up by this time, for I wasn’t five minutes ahead of ’em, and—there they are now!”