iron shod and
heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of
Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel
his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and
threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The
handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered
Tom not a little to find where it had been. But at last he did so,
dropping his line for the lantern, according to the plan we had arranged
beforehand, so as to avoid all shouting and noise. When he had placed
the lantern to his satisfaction, the line came straggling down again
for the block and the gear to make it fast with, and when this was done
the inch Manila went up, and everything was ready.

It showed how well Tom and I had thought it out, that there wasn't a
single hitch, except for the lantern blowing out and Tom having no
matches, I going up to see what was delaying him, and having none
neither. Then we changed places, Tom being a heavier man to pull, and I
remaining aloft to handle the freight as it came along. They made the
boatswain's chair fast below, and sent her up with the first load--two
bags of coin--getting it on a level with the platform by the lantern
marking the place. I stood on the platform and had no trouble in yanking
the stuff in; and this went right along like a mail steamer, till it was
all up, and it came old Dibs's turn.

But he just took one look at the boatswain's chair, and said "Nit,"
laying down on the ground when they tried to persuade him into it, and
rolling over and over in desperation. We argufied over him for an hour,
and it seemed all to no purpose, he refusing to budge an inch, saying he
weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and was better off in the attic.

Time was running away on us, and me and Tom got tired of saying the same
things over and over, and always getting the same answers, and finally
we lost our tempers, and said we'd go home. Then he said he'd come
home, too, and we said No, we had washed our hands of him. Then he said
he was only a poor old man and would blow his brains out, and we said he
might, if he wanted to. Then, when we had gone about twenty paces, he
come lumbering after us, saying, "For God's sake, stop!" and swearing he
would go up peaceful, and make no more trouble.

We tied him in like a baby in a high chair, I going up to receive him,
while my wife and Tom laid on to the rope with a yeo-h