“Then what?”
“Put the boy ashore, give him a few dollars, and trust to him to keep out of the way.”
“But look here, Nel. If we land him at Provincetown, he’ll have to come back all around the Cape. That’ll take him an age.”
“There’s the railroad. Why can’t he take a train?”
“Suppose he does? All Captain Chowder, or whatever his name is, will have to do is to go down the Cape and head him off.”
“That’s so,” answered Nelson thoughtfully. “But it seems to me he ought to be able to hide out for awhile. The captain can’t afford to spend much time chasing him. What do you say, Spencer? Do you think that if we put you ashore at Provincetown, you could keep out of the captain’s way?”
Spencer shook his head.
“He’d get me,” he muttered. “He’d say I had deserted, and then they’d be looking out for me along the road.”
“He’s right,” said Dan. “That’s just what would happen. They’d probably telegraph along the railroad, and he’d be yanked back to the Henry Nellis quick-time. That won’t do. We’ve got to think of some other scheme.”
“I wish I’d started up the coast,” said Nelson regretfully. “We might have made Plymouth easily, and if we’d got him ashore there he’d have had the whole State to hide in.”