"Of course not!" I replied with somewhat of anger in my tone that he should suspect Archie of any such vileness. "The lad is true to his friends, and would never betray them no matter how much silence might cost him."
"Then it looks as if some one had got an amazingly good idee of what we would do, and from what part of the town we'd set off," Hiram said thoughtfully. "Those fellows couldn't have set about their work better if we'd told them in advance that we'd leave the ship-yard and try to go to Cambridge."
Like a flash came into my mind the thought that Seth Jepson might have succeeded in doing us this mischief, if mischief had really been done; but I dismissed it on the instant, saying to myself that surely the lad could not have known what we were likely to do, even were it probable he had had opportunity of speaking to those we had stumbled against.
"It is neither more nor less than blind chance," I said in reply to my companion's words. "Because we headed for the ship-yard they supposed we had a boat nearby, and because our people were gathering at Cambridge they would naturally say it was our purpose to go there."
"Whichever way you put it, it's going to be mighty tough on us, for unless those fellows get tired of pulling that heavy boat 'twixt now and sunrise, we are like to be held here until to-morrow night."
CHAPTER IV
THE PRISONER
Whether it was that those who were the same as holding us prisoners on the island had an inkling we were somewhere in the vicinity, or if it was by pure chance that they happened to patrol that particular part of the harbor just then, I am unable to say; but certain it was that they remained continually on the move throughout the entire night, never going so far away that we had half an opportunity of slipping out unobserved, and now and then coming so near that it was possible for us to hear their conversation.