then we payed out on the rope to make certain it
went up without kinks.

In less than three minutes a man slipped down the line at a rate of
speed that must have heated his hands in great shape, and he was
hardly more than on the ground before the second prisoner followed.

We had effected the escape, and it now remained to get under cover in
the shortest possible space of time.

"It won't do to run; but you can keep close at my heels," the captain
said as he set off at a walk which fully equaled running, and we
followed very closely, I literally holding my breath as I tried to
realize that the task which had seemed so formidable a few moments
previous, had been accomplished with the greatest ease.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE UNEXPECTED.

There is little need for me to set it down that we neither slackened
pace nor halted until we were in the cuddy of the pungy.

Not a member of our party spoke until we descended the companion-way
stairs, and faced the lads and my father, who had lighted a candle as
a sort of welcome, and then Darius exclaimed:

"Well I'm blowed if you don't look kind'er cozy here! Who'd think this
crowd had been hob-nobbin' with the Britishers for the last two or
three days? Bob Hanaford, where did the lads run afoul of you, an' why
didn't you get your pungy down river before the enemy's fleet came
up?"

There was a deal of handshaking and congratulations before we settled
down to anything like rational talk, and then Jerry and I told how we
found the captain, and what had happened since Darius left the
smoke-house.

Then it was the old man's turn to give an account of his
misadventures, and this he did after refreshing himself with an
enormous piece of tobacco.

"I went out, leavin' you people in hidin', with the idee that if many
shops were to be robbed by the soldiers I might get somethin' to eat
out'er the general wreck. First off nothin' came my way, an' then I
ran square across a basket of ship's bread. Thinks I, this is good
enough for one trip, an' I gathered the stuff under my arm, puttin'
for the smoke-house under full sail without bein' noticed by the
red-coats, who were havin' too lively a time to give me much
attention. As luck would have it, the thought never came into my mind
that I had need to look for anybody but Britishers, an' before I was
halfway to port I struck up agin that sneak, Elias Macomber.

"Then it was I understood that the red-coats wasn't the only snags in