Dicky had watched it all, having crept up on the porch, and seeing in the one flash of the lantern that General Prescott had on only his nightclothes, Dicky darted in the room, grabbed a pile of clothes that lay upon a chair, and flew after the party in the boat.
They had already made much headway, and as it was some minutes before the people in the house had been able to get a light from the slow process of the tinder box or raking over the kitchen fire, the Americans had a good start. They changed their direction soon after entering the ravine, and half an hour’s rapid walking, and carrying the British officer, brought them to their boats.
Dicky had expected to hear a loud protest from General Prescott, but when he had followed the party to their boats he saw the reason of the general’s silence. A long horse pistol had been held to his head every step of the way. General Prescott broke silence for the first time as he was being hustled into the boat.
“I have no breeches on,” he said.
“Here they be,” cried Dicky in an excited but subdued voice, and he threw a bundle of clothes into the boat.
Desperate as their circumstances still were, the Americans could not help laughing at this; the more so when Sam Ink, his head uninjured by being used as a battering ram, said politely:
“Lem me be your vally, suh. I’se used to bein’ great men’s vally, suh.”
“Thank you, my good man,” coolly replied General Prescott as Sam with more haste than elegance hustled the general’s clothes on.
The boats then put out for the other side of the bay, and Dick quickly turned and ran toward home. A general alarm had been given by that time, but everybody supposed that the kidnappers were somewhere in the woods near by, or possibly in some deserted quarter of the town. Soldiers were running about, the drum was beating, skyrockets had been sent up, and the alarm had been conveyed to the guardship in the harbor, which sent a boat ashore to find out the cause of the commotion.
Dicky got on all right until just as he reached his mother’s door in the narrow street where they lived, when he ran full tilt into the arms of a sergeant with a searching party. Remembering that he had to play the part of a small and frightened boy, Dicky, who was not frightened in the least, screwed his face up and broke out into a frightful howl as the sergeant caught him by the collar of his jacket.