Archer's education was certainly helping him greatly.
"If we could once get overr therre into that Black Forest," he continued, scanning the Baden shore and the heights beyond with the rescued glass, "we'd be on easy street 'cause I remember gettin' licked forr sayin', 'the abrupt west slopes of this romantic region are something or otherr with wild vineyards that grow in furious thing-um-bobs——'"
"What?" said Tom.
"Anyway, there's lots of grapes there," Archer concluded.
"If that's the way you said it I don't blame 'em for lickin' you," said sober Tom. "I think by tonight I'll be able to swim it. There seems to be some houses over there—that's one thing I don't like."
The Baden side, as well as they could make out through the haze, was pretty thickly populated for a mile or two, but the lonesome mountains arose beyond and once there, they would be safe, they felt sure.
They spent the day in the dilapidated frontier tower, as Archer called it, and he was probably not far from right in his guess about it. Certainly it had not been used for many years except apparently by fishermen occasionally, and the rotten condition of the seines showed that even such visitors had long since ceased to use it. Perhaps indeed it was a sort of outpost watch tower belonging to the gray castle which they saw through the mist.
"Maybe it belonged to a Gerrman baron," suggested Tom.
"Anyway, it's a barren island," said Archer; "are you hungry?"
Tom sat in the doorway, favoring his hurt knee, and watched Archer move cautiously about among the sharp, slippery rocks, where he succeeded in cornering and spearing several bewildered fish which the troubled waters of the night had marooned in these small recesses.