“The worst of it is,” says Catty, “it’s all our fault.”

“How so?” says I.

“That chart, of course. They’d never have known where to dig if I hadn’t fixed up that chart and wished it on Mr. House. Of course there was rotten luck in it. We thought we were sending them off on a wild-goose chase—and however we came to hit on the very spot where the treasure’s buried, I can’t see. But we did, and there they are, and we’ve done it.”

“Well,” says I, “we did the best we could.”

“We butted in,” says he, “and if I was Mr. Browning, I’d take me and drown me in a potato sack.”

“They haven’t found the treasure yet,” says I.

“But they’ve got it fenced in with barbed wire, and they’ll dig till they get it if they have to dig up the whole shooting match. What’s almost as bad, we can’t get a chance to dig at all. We’re licked,” he says, and looked mighty doleful.

“We might watch them till they dig it up—and then sneak it away from them,” says I.

“Fine chance,” says he. “You and I would look pretty getting a treasure away from about fifty men, to say nothing of a barbed wire fence.”

“You’ve kept hammering it into me,” says I, “that there’s always a way anything can be done.”

“If you can think of it,” says he.

“Then,” says I, “it looks like our job from now on is thinking.”

“Then let’s go back to the yacht and think,” says he.

We rowed back kind of silent and discouraged, and climbed aboard. The whole crew were sitting up on deck smoking pipes when we came up the ladder, and Naboth says, “There they be.”

“So they be,” says Rameses III.

But Tom, the engineer, didn’t say a word, like always.

“Boys,” says Naboth, “is a nuisance.”

“I hold,” says Rameses III, “that they hain’t.”

“Why?” says Naboth.

“Because there hain’t no law agin ’em. There’s a law against nuisances. You can sue a man for a nuisance, and if you go commit some kind of a nuisance or other, I dunno but what they could put you in jail. But the’ hain’t a state in the Union that’s got a law agin boys. Therefore,” says he, “that proves they can’t be nuisances.”

“You’re wrong,” says Naboth, “like you always be. You hain’t got no head to reason out things. No. All you do is git an idee, and then open up your mouth and start talkin’. If a word of reason was ever to come out of your mouth, your lips ’ud be so s’prised they’d blister. Now I hold boys is the worst nuisances the’ is.”

“Why?” says Rameses III, kind of warlike.

“Because,” says Naboth, “they’re always bein’ nuisances, and nobody kin discover a way to stop ’em. You can’t drownd ’em like kittens, can you?”

“No.”

“Well, that proves it, don’t it?”

“Proves what?”

“That they’re nuisances.”

“Say.... You listen here, you deck-swabbin’ cousin to a sick porpoise! That don’t prove nothin’. A boy’s a nuisance because you can’t drownd him! I suppose an elephant’s a nuisance because you can’t pack his shirts in his trunk, eh? Or a piano’s a nuisance because you can’t use it for a cook stove. Allus knowed you was sort of touched in the head, but I calc’late you’re about ready to be shut up with a keeper ’fore you start to git vi’lent.... Now take these boys here. Be they nuisances? And if they be, why? Let’s git right down to logic, as they call it. Now, you tell me why these here two boys right in front of you is nuisances.”

“Because they act like nuisances,” says Naboth.

“How?” says Rameses III.

“Well, in the first place,” says Naboth, “they’re boys, and bein’ boys they’ve got to be nuisances, because boys always is. It’s like this, pig is always pork, hain’t it? Can’t be nothin’ else.”

“Sausage,” says Rameses III.

“Pork sausage,” says Naboth. “And cow always is beef, hain’t it?”

“Sure, beef.”

“And flounders is always fish, hain’t they?”

“Yes, but whales hain’t.”

“Here’s what I’m gittin’ at. Everythin’ is what it is, hain’t it?”

“To be sure.”

“Then,” says Naboth, kind of scornful, “boys is always nuisances. Guess that proves it so’s even you kin see it.”

Rameses III kind of scratched his head like he was almost convinced, or anyhow, like he couldn’t see any way out of Naboth’s argument. He acted like he could see Naboth had made a point, and it was a hard point, and one that not many people could jump over or walk around. He acted as if Naboth had handed out a regular clincher, and Naboth acted so, too. Why, he just sat back and puffed his pipe, and swelled all up with pride, and winked at Tom, and grinned superior at Rameses III. He was so proud of himself he was like to bust.

But all at once Rameses III kind of got his second wind and he leaned forward and sailed in and before he got through with it, Naboth was going down for the third time, and Rameses had hammered over a clincher.

“Listen,” says he. “Ships hain’t railroad trains, be they?”

“No.”

“But they both carry folks and freight, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And cows hain’t whales, be they?”

“No.”

“But they both give milk, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And pants hain’t hats, be they?”

“No.”

“But you wear both of ’em, don’t you?”

“Y-yes,” says Naboth, beginning to get kind of worried and losing his grin of satisfaction. I guess he commenced to see what a trap Rameses III was leading him into, and couldn’t see any way out of it.

“And barnacles is a nuisance, hain’t they?”

“They be.”

“Well, then, is boys barnacles?” says Rameses III, and he threw back his head and let out a bellow, and slapped his knee, and rocked back and forth in his chair, and reached over and poked old Tom in the ribs. I thought he was going to have a fit. “There,” says he, “that settles it. A barnacle is a nuisance, but a boy hain’t a barnacle, so a boy jest can’t be a nuisance, because if he was a nuisance he’d be a barnacle, and he hain’t a barnacle, and there you be.”

“I hain’t convinced,” says Naboth.

“And I hain’t convinced by your argument,” says Rameses III.

“Tom here has heard both sides,” says Naboth. “Let’s leave it to him.”

“Sure,” says Rameses III, “Tom’ll be the judge. Speak up Tom, fair and honest. Which of us has got the best of it? Which one made the best argument?”

Tom puffed a few moments, and kind of waggled his head, and squinted his eyes, and acted like a man trying to digest something pretty knotty. Once he opened his mouth, but he wasn’t quite ready to say anything, so he shut it up again, and held it shut with his hand, as if he was afraid it might open up and say something before he wanted it to. It was kind of hard for Naboth and Rameses III to wait. You could see they were all het up and anxious, but neither of them dared say a word for fear of upsetting Tom. Pretty soon Tom let loose of his jaw so he could open, and rolled his eyes, and cleared his throat three times, and he spit over the side. Then he blinked his eyes and stared at Catty and me. By that time he got around to opening up his mouth.

“It’s a tie,” he says, and then shut his mouth and kind of locked it again for the day.

Well, it was hard on Catty and me. There we were. With that argument a tie, how were we ever to know whether we were nuisances or not, and it would be weighing on our minds. You can’t help letting a thing like that worry you.

It was kind of embarrassing, standing around there like that, and wondering, so we went down into the cabin to talk.

“If the soldiers over in France,” says Catty, “could get through barbed wire entanglements, and make trench raids, and capture prisoners, I guess we can get through a single wire fence.”

“But what would we do with prisoners?” says I.

“We wouldn’t take prisoners,” he says, “we’d just get information.”

“But there’ll be guards.”

“So were there guards over in the trenches,” says he.

“Well,” says I, “I don’t like the idea much.”

“We’ve got to do it. It’s our duty.”

“Oh, it’s our duty, eh? That’s a different matter. I s’pose we’ll have to go then.”

“Tonight,” says he. “Maybe we can borrow some wire cutters of Tom.”

“I’ve got over fences without wire cutters,” says I.

“It wouldn’t be right in this case,” he says. “You can’t have a trench raid without wire cutters. It’s never been done, and if we were to go wrong on an important thing, no telling what would come of it. You have to do things right, and there’s just one right way.”

“That settles that,” says I, “but, all the same, I can climb a barbed wire fence.”

“And we’ll go by land,” he says. “I never held much with naval attacks on land positions. Look at the Dardanelles fight. The navy got all the worst of it. No. We’ll make a land attack.”

“It’s a rotten long walk.”

“It’s strategy,” says he.

“Go ahead,” says I, “you know best.”

“We’ll wait till dark, and I hope it’s awful dark.”

“And we won’t be able to carry a lantern,” says I. “We’ll break our necks sure.”

“What we’ve got to do is plan it out,” he says, “and know every move by heart. It’s the only chance of success.”

“Sure,” says I, “but if we succeed, what do we get out of it?”

“Information,” says he.

“We’ve got that now. We know there’s a fence and men guarding it, and we know they’re going to dig for our treasure.”

He just shrugged his shoulders as if I was asking a foolish question, and maybe I was. Somehow I never know when I’m asking a foolish question. Lots of questions I think are all right get me into trouble, or get me laughed at. Asking questions isn’t safe. The best way is to keep your mouth shut and saw wood.

“We’ll make a map,” says he.

“It’s a map that got us into all this trouble,” says I.

“This one won’t,” he says, and off he went to the chart case and got out the chart of Nantucket, and then we found some paper and worked out all our military maneuvers so we would know just what to do every second.

“We’ll have to have a zero hour,” says he, “and then a time to reach every objective.”

“Fine,” says I, “but how’ll we see our watches in the dark. And besides,” says I, “we haven’t any watches.”

“Pretend we have,” says he, and that settled another point.

Well, we managed to borrow some wire cutters from Tom, though it was a hard job. He was about as easy to borrow tools from as an ordinary person would be to borrow a nose or an ear from, but we wheedled it out of him.

Then we waited. We read, and played checkers, and ate whenever we could tease anything away from Naboth. It was a long time to wait, but after hours and hours, it got dusk, and then we rowed ashore. By the time we landed it was pretty dark, and so we started through town and out onto the beach. And by the time we left the lights of Nantucket town behind us, it was so dark you couldn’t feel the back of your neck.

“Just the kind of night I hoped for,” says Catty.

“Me, too,” says I, but I didn’t mean it. I didn’t like it. I wished I had a lantern that threw a light like an arc lamp. I never did like the dark, and I don’t care who knows it, and every time I stepped in a hole and went onto my nose, I liked it less. One thing I was glad of. It was a long way to the place we were going to raid and the longer it was, the farther off the time was when we had to do it. I would have been willing to put it off till next year.