We need only wait till daylight to find you
walking in a circle."
"You can't mean," Lanyard pursued, learning something helpful every moment,
"there is no communicating road?"
"The main woods road, yes: but that is far too well patrolled. Without the
countersign, you would be caught or shot a dozen times before you reached
the end of it."
"Ah, well!"--with the sigh of a philosopher--"then I presume there's no way
out but by swimming."
"Over to the beach you mean? Well, what then? You have got a twenty-mile
walk either way through deep sand sure to betray your footprints. At dawn
we follow and bag you at our leisure."
"You are discouraging!" Lanyard complained. "I see I may as well go below
and be good. It's a dull life."
"Tell you what," giggled the lieutenant, leading his prisoner to the
conning-tower hatch and lowering his voice: "do just that, go below and be
nice, and presently I will come back and we'll split a bottle. What do you
say to that, eh?"
"Colossal!"
"Not a bad notion, is it? I like it myself.
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