That poet never made no remarks.  He jumped to the stern and caught hold of the skiff’s painter.  I shoved him out of the way and picked up the boat hook.  Jonadab rolled up his shirt sleeves and laid hands on the centerboard stick.

“I wouldn’t, if I was you,” says the cap’n.

Jonadab weighs pretty close to two hundred, and most of it’s gristle.  I’m not quite so much, fur’s tonnage goes, but I ain’t exactly a canary bird.  Montague seemed to size things up in a jiffy.  He looked at us, then at the sail, and then at the shore out over the stern.

“Done!” says he.  “Done!  And by a couple of ’farmers’!”

And down he sets on the thwart.

Well, we sailed all that day and all that night.  ’Course we didn’t really intend to make the Bermudas.  What we intended to do was to cruise around alongshore for a couple of weeks, long enough for the Stumptons to get back to Dillaway’s, settle the copper business and break for Montana.  Then we was going home again and turn Brown’s relation over to him to take care of.  We knew Peter’d have some plan thought out by that time.  We’d left a note telling him what we’d done, and saying that we trusted to him to explain matters to Maudina and her dad.  We knew that explaining was Peter’s main holt.

The poet was pretty chipper for a spell.  He set on the thwart and bragged about what he’d do when he got back to “Petey” again.  He said we couldn’t git rid of him so easy.  Then he spun yarns about what him and Brown did when they was out West together.  They was interesting yarns, but we could see why Peter wa’n’t anxious to introduce Cousin Henry to Belle.  Then the Patience M. got out where ’twas pretty rugged, and she rolled consider’ble and after that we didn’t hear much more from friend Booth—­he was too busy to talk.

That night me and Jonadab took watch and watch.  In the morning it thickened up and looked squally.  I got kind of worried.  By nine o’clock there was every sign of a no’theaster, and we see we’d have to put in somewheres and ride it out.  So we headed for a place we’ll call Baytown, though that wa’n’t the name of it.  It’s a queer, old-fashioned town, and it’s on an island; maybe you can guess it from that.

Well, we run into the harbor and let go anchor.  Jonadab crawled into the cabin to get some terbacker, and I was for’ard coiling the throat halyard.  All at once I heard oars rattling, and I turned my head; what I see made me let out a yell like a siren whistle.

There was that everlasting poet in the skiff—­you remember we’d been towing it astern—­and he was jest cutting the painter with his jackknife.  Next minute he’d picked up the oars and was heading for the wharf, doubling up and stretching out like a frog swimming, and with his curls streaming in the wind like a rooster’s tail in a hurricane.  He had a long start ’fore Jonadab and me woke up enough to think of chasing him.