“Of course you did,” said Joe. “But, tell you what, I’d as lief come back, but then, any fellow’d get away, if he had Jim to show him how.”
“Big adventure!” exclaimed another officer.
That was indeed a part of it, and there was no reason, now, why Joe should conceal anything. He went with them to the dormitory and explained about the locks. Then they walked out into the parade-ground, where the empty boxes still lay at the machine shop wall.
“We went over the roof,” said Joe, and every man who heard him tell how they did it agreed with the Superintendent.
“Jim is a genius!” he exclaimed. “Not one boy in a thousand could have planned and carried out that escape.”
“He’s a captain!” added the skipper of the steam tug. “But we’d have caught ’em, if it hadn’t been for that fog.”
“We shall get them all, before long,” said Jim’s friend, the naval officer. “All but Jim. I’m afraid we’ve lost him. I’m sorry. I did want to do something more for that boy.”
The very kindly man in charge of the House of Refuge printing office also remarked that it was a pity Jim should run away, just when he was learning his trade so fast and so well. He could hardly have guessed that Jim was already at a case in another shop, setting type as busily as usual.
Mr. Kirby himself, a grey-haired, silent man, with a queer kind of smile on his face, was working at the press in another room, but Jim was not the only type-setter. At the next case stood Millie, and between them and the door were other ranges of cases, and two of these were journeymen printers. All were seemingly absorbed in their type-sticking when a man in a blue uniform opened the street door and strolled in.
“Where’s Kirby?” he asked.