“Here’s what we want first,” said Little Tim, softly, producing a big auger from the box. “We’ll use this for awhile, because it doesn’t make any noise.”
“Great!” exclaimed Joe Hinman, whose imagination was now fired with the idea of mischief. “Let me have the first turn at it.”
Little Tim yielded him the precedence.
Climbing out of the yacht again, Joe Hinman proceeded to bore into the planking of the Surprise, on the opposite side from the shore. This served to hide their operations and also to deaden what little sound it made. He went laboriously along the length of one plank, and then turned the auger over to Little Tim, who went to work with a subdued squeal of delight.
“Keep to the same plank,” said Joe. “We don’t want to ruin the whole bottom of the boat.”
They bored the holes in turn, close together, all around one plank, and then began on another. It was tiresome work, but they served three long pieces of planking the same way.
Then they brought out a great chisel and pried off the planking, fearful of the noise it made. But they had done their work well, and the sound of the tearing wood was not sharp. No one stirred out aboard the yacht.
“That’s enough,” said Joe, as the third plank came away. “They’ll have hard work to match that up in two days. They’re short of wood now, by the way they patched the other place.”
“We’ll take away the pieces of planking we’ve cut out, to make sure, and bury them in the sand up alongshore,” suggested George Baker.
“Why not take the box of tools, too?” said Little Tim, whose blood was fired, and who would have stopped at nothing.