business-like tone:

"True for you; but I was mighty certain that I should go, even though
none other agreed to bear me company."

"And you were also decided that your plan should be carried out," Harvey
said with a laugh.

"Aye, because if you lads had agreed upon getting into the town by the
same route as you have been doing, I should have set off by myself."

It vexed me not a little that Hiram had gone through the form of
consulting us when he was already determined on what he would do and how
it should be done; but no good could come from my giving words to such
thoughts, and I held my peace.

Hiram and Harvey worked the oars. I made myself as comfortable as
possible in the stern-sheets, while Archie perforce remained in the bow
of the craft in order that he might, as Griffin expressed it, "trim
ship."

We went rapidly down past the two breastworks known as "number one" and
"number two" without having been hailed by those on shore, and indeed
there was no good reason why our people should interfere with any who
were so far up the river.

Near to nightfall, however, when we were come to that three-gun battery
which stood just above where Fort Brookline was afterward built, the
sentinel made peremptory demand that we come on shore and give an
account of ourselves.

"This is work for you to do, since you are the captain," Hiram said to
me, and I retorted:

"I may be the captain of the Minute Boys, but I am surely not the leader
of this expedition. If there is any question raised here against our
continuing the voyage, you are the one who must answer it."

"That can be done in short order," Hiram replied laughingly as, swinging
the bow of the boat around until it was stuck fast in the mud, he leaped
ashore with the bearing of one who sets about some trifling task.

There was almost a hope in my mind that we might be prevented from going
further on our hazardous venture, but when in less than ten minutes
Hiram returned, looking as if he had never known a care in his life, I
understood that either by making a clean breast of the matter, or by
inventing some plausible reason for our leaving Cambridge, he had
satisfied the officer in command of the battery.

It was long past midnight when we were arrived at the mouth of the
river, and since there was no good reason why we should strive to come
to an end of our journey a few hours sooner or later, we hauled the
skiff ashore where grew a thicket of bushes, suc