“Yes; but how are we to know whether they’re in the cave or not?” said Corrie, impatiently.
“Ah! that’s the puzzler,” replied Bumpus, in a meditative way; “but, of course, we must look out for puzzlers ahead sometimes w’en we gets into a land storm, d’ye see; just as we looks out ahead for breakers in a storm at sea. Suppose now that I creeps into the cave and listens for ’em. They’d never hear me, ’cause I’d make no noise.”
“You might as well try to sail into it in a big ship without making noise, you Grampus.”
To this the Grampus observed, that if the cave had only three fathoms of water in the bottom of it he would have no objection whatever to try.
“But,” added he, “suppose you go in.”
Corrie shook his head, and looked anxiously miserable.
“Well then,” said Bumpus, “suppose we light two torches. I’ll take one in one hand, and this here cutlash in the other; and you’ll take t’other torch in one hand and your pistol in the other, and clap that bit of a broken sword ’tween yer teeth, and we’ll give a horrid screech, and rush in pell-mell—all of a heap like. You could fire yer pistol straight before you on chance, (it’s wonderful wot a chance shot will do sometimes), an’ if it don’t do nothin’, fling it right into the blackguard’s face—a brass-mounted tool like that ketchin’ him right on the end of his beak would lay him flat over, like a ship in a white squall.”
“And suppose,” said Corrie, in a tone of withering sarcasm, “suppose all this happened to Alice, instead of the dirty nigger?”
“Ah! to be sure. That’s a puzzler—puzzler number two.”
Here Poopy, who had listened with great impatience to the foregoing conversation, broke in energetically.