"I'll leave a note for Bernard, confessing about the books, and then Joe Chester can go. Even if the master did not get the note till after the boat started, he would come back for Joe."
"Now, Ralph, if you do this I am set adrift too, you see. I have told as many lies as you have, and if you tell on yourself it will come out somehow,--that I know."
"No, it won't, Ben."
"It will, as sure as anything. Anyhow my courage is gone too. I don't want to face Mr. Bernard and the other fellows. No, sir! I shall stick by you. Give us your hand, old fellow. 'Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,' we'll stick together. What's the use of a chum that won't stick? Now, where shall we go? That's the question."
"That's the question," repeated Ralph, beginning to throw things into his open trunk, to be left till called for, because he expected this was to end his school-days at Massillon Academy.
"If we start off now on foot we shall be tracked, for Mr. Bernard will not rest till he gets news of us."
"That's so. And if we wait and go by train in the morning, all the town will know it. That will never do."
Both meditated a while, and then Ben said, waving an imaginary hat around his head, "I tell you! Let's go over to the Cape and see if we can't find a vessel bound out. Father sent me ten pounds for the camp out, and we'll hire a passage."
"Agreed!--the very thing! What shall we want to take?"
"We will wear these school-suits, and pack up some rough clothes, our blankets, and just about what we would take to camp, for we may have to work our way to get the fellow to take us."