"Then you rank me, and I am very glad that it is so," answered Lieutenant Sterling; and he proceeded to inform his command of the fact, for all of them had been ordered to suspend work.
"Do you happen to know what any of your wagons contain?" asked Deck, who was ready to address himself to the task of moving the wagons to the forest road.
"They are loaded for the most part with rations for the troops, and grain for the horses and mules, with some general supplies."
"Do you know if there is any rope among the supplies?"
"The quartermaster-sergeant can answer that question better than I can," replied the officer.
"Plenty of it, Lieutenant," replied this man. "It is in the first wagon in the line."
"Bring out at least a hundred feet of inch-rope," added Deck. "You were not moving the wagons to the nearest hard ground."
"My aim was to get them to a road indicated on the map over in that direction," replied Lieutenant Sterling, pointing over towards the one by which the Riverlawns had come from Jamestown. "According to the scale on my map it is about two miles over there."
"That is very true; but, according to the fact, it is less than a third of a mile to the woods where we came upon the meadow."
"But it would take me longer to cut a road through the woods to the road than it would to wallow through the mud to the road."