"Aye, because if you lads had agreed upon getting into the town by the same route as you have been doing, I should have set off by myself."
It vexed me not a little that Hiram had gone through the form of consulting us when he was already determined on what he would do and how it should be done; but no good could come from my giving words to such thoughts, and I held my peace.
Hiram and Harvey worked the oars. I made myself as comfortable as possible in the stern-sheets, while Archie perforce remained in the bow of the craft in order that he might, as Griffin expressed it, "trim ship."
We went rapidly down past the two breastworks known as "number one" and "number two" without having been hailed by those on shore, and indeed there was no good reason why our people should interfere with any who were so far up the river.
Near to nightfall, however, when we were come to that three-gun battery which stood just above where Fort Brookline was afterward built, the sentinel made peremptory demand that we come on shore and give an account of ourselves.
"This is work for you to do, since you are the captain," Hiram said to me, and I retorted:
"I may be the captain of the Minute Boys, but I am surely not the leader of this expedition. If there is any question raised here against our continuing the voyage, you are the one who must answer it."
"That can be done in short order," Hiram replied laughingly as, swinging the bow of the boat around until it was stuck fast in the mud, he leaped ashore with the bearing of one who sets about some trifling task.
There was almost a hope in my mind that we might be prevented from going further on our hazardous venture, but when in less than ten minutes Hiram returned, looking as if he had never known a care in his life, I understood that either by making a clean breast of the matter, or by inventing some plausible reason for our leaving Cambridge, he had satisfied the officer in command of the battery.
It was long past midnight when we were arrived at the mouth of the river, and since there was no good reason why we should strive to come to an end of our journey a few hours sooner or later, we hauled the skiff ashore where grew a thicket of bushes, such as would conceal us from view of any who might pass either by land or water.