It was time for us to go to bed, but Mark called us into the dining-room
to a council of war. We sat down around the table, with Mark at the
head. He started talking almost in a whisper.
“S-s-speak low,” says he. “We don’t want the enemy to overhear our
plans.”
That was right, for they might have sneaked up to the side of the house
to listen. Mark wasn’t the sort of fellow to neglect any precaution just
because it might not be necessary. Sometimes I thought he was too
cautious, but usually it turned out he did the right thing.
“We can’t g-git out of here by daylight,” he says. “It’s got to be at
n-n-night or early in the morning. Morning’s the best time, ’cause folks
are t-t-tired with watchin’. ’Bout three in the m-mornin’.”
“You seem pretty sure we’re goin’ to git out,” says I.
“We _got_ to git out,” says he, just as if that settled it. It didn’t
seem to enter his head that sometimes folks can’t do things they think
they’ve got to do.
“All right,” says I, but I was feeling sort of hopeless. “Let’s git at
it. We’re losin’ time.”
“We w-won’t lose any more,” Mark says. “Has your uncle got a shovel?”
“I dun’no’,” says I; “and if he has it’s out in the barn.”
“Then we g-g-got to make one.”
“How?”
“Out of a board. Whittle it. We better make a c-couple while we’re at
it.”
There was a big soap-box in the kitchen that Uncle Hieronymous used for
a sort of table. Mark decided this would do all right, so we pulled it
apart, and he and I set to work whittling shovels out of it. They were
pretty clumsy, but Mark said they were all right, and so long as they
suited him they were good enough for me.
“N-n-now,” says he, “we want a hatchet.”
“It’s in the cupboard,” says I. “What you want of it?”
“P-p-pry up a board in the floor,” says he.
“You can’t crawl out under the house. There isn’t any opening. The logs
go down to the ground all the way around.”
“I knew it,” he says. “What you s’pose the sh-sh-shovels are for?”
I got the hatchet, and we decided it was best to pull up a board in the
kitchen, where they were wider. The kitchen floor was rough lumber, and
some boards were eight inches wide, with cracks between.
“It’ll make a n-noise,” says Mark, “and they’ll suspect we’re up to
somethin’.” He thought a minnit, pulling hard on his cheek. Then he got
down the dish-pan and handed it to Plunk and gave Tallow a couple of
milk-pans.
“When we b-begin work,” says he, “you make a racket. Keep at it steady.”
All of a sudden he looked disgusted and kind of sorry for himself. He
shook his head and slapped his leg. “There,” says he, “I almost forgot
the window. Hang a quilt over it, Binney, so’s they can’t see in.”
I did that, and then we went to work on the floor, but first I told Mark
I had a better noise-maker than a tin pan. I got it out of my satchel.
It was a tin can with a string through it. There was a piece of resin,
too, and when you put the can against a window and pulled the string it
let out a racket that would scare a crow. Tallow took that and started
in. Plunk pounded on the pans. All of us war-whooped.
It was hard work getting up the board, and we made a lot of noise at it,
but I don’t believe Jiggins and Collins ever noticed anything besides
the squealing squawk of the tin can and the banging on the pans and the
hollering. It must have surprised them some, and I bet they wondered
what we were up to. At last we got two boards up. That gave us plenty of
space to crawl through.
Mark signaled to Tallow and Plunk to let up their racket. My, but it
sounded quiet when they stopped! You never know how quiet stillness is
until a big noise stops all of a sudden. Collins began to yell outside.
“Hey!” says he, “what you kids doing? Think this is the Fourth of July?”
“We were j-j-just trying to keep from f-fallin’ asleep,” says Mark.
Collins laughed. It wasn’t a mad laugh, but a really-truly good-natured
one. “I hope you’ll get through before I go off watch. It’s rather
company for me while I’m up, but most likely my friend Jiggins won’t
appreciate it.”
“He don’t,” came a sleepy voice. “Not any. Decidedly not. First, down
comes tent. Second, hullabalee. Quit it. Quit it.”
“G-guess we will,” says Mark. “Good night.”
They both called good night, friendly-like. It hardly seemed we were
prisoners and they were enemy, but all the same that was the fact. I’ve
heard about pickets in the Civil War meeting between the lines and
exchanging things and being good friends, only to try to shoot each
other next morning, and it didn’t seem exactly possible. I couldn’t see
how a man you liked could be your enemy and how you could try to beat
him, but I do now.
Mark wiggled his finger at us, and we gathered in a little knot around
him, with our heads close together.
“We’ll divide into two w-watches,” he stuttered. “Binney and I will
w-w-watch first. Two hours. Then Tallow and Plunk. By mornin’ we must
have it d-d-dug.”
“Have what dug?”
“The tunnel,” says Mark. “We’re prisoners in Andersonville, hain’t we?
D-d-didn’t the rebels capture us, and hain’t we starvin’? I’d like to
know if we hain’t. Look out of the window and you c-can see gray-coated
guards with m-muskets.”
Here was a surprise. We weren’t shut into a cave by white savages any
longer. We didn’t have any jewel out of an idol. We were nothing but
Union soldiers in a rebel prison.
“Binney and I will d-dig two hours,” Mark says. “Then we’ll wake you.
You d-dig two hours and wake us. It’s got to be d-d-done before
daylight.”
Plunk and Tallow went to bed with their clothes on while Mark and I put
out the light and crowded under the floor. There was plenty of room when
we got down, but it was dark as a pocket. Mark lighted the lantern.
“Won’t they see that?” I asked.
“No,” says he. “There hain’t no ch-chinks.”
We crawled to the front of the house and began to dig with our wooden
shovels. The digging was easy because the house sat on a regular
sand-pit. All that country is sand, anyhow. Mark says it was probably
the shore of Lake Michigan once, and that the lake kept throwing up sand
and throwing up sand until it crowded itself back fifty miles or so.
Maybe that is so, but it took a mighty long time to do it.
The worst part of the digging was the way sand kept running back into
the hole. We couldn’t stop it, and so we had to dig about four times as
much as we would if it had only stayed where it belonged. We never
rested, though, and by the end of our two hours we had a good deep hole
dug. We’d got below the logs. Plunk and Tallow would have to make the
hole larger and begin to tunnel under. It looked to me as if we could
finish all right in our second two hours. That would bring us out about
three o’clock.
I slept like a log until Tallow waked me up. It didn’t seem as though
I’d got my head down on the pillow, and for a minnit I didn’t want to
get up. I didn’t care if we never escaped. But Tallow kept on shaking me
and yanking me till I was roused, and then it was all right. Mark and I
went under the house again, and I want to say that Tallow and Plunk had
worked like beavers. They’d done a lot more than I expected they would.
Mark was tickled, too.
“Now,” says he, “we got to work f-f-fast.”
We did. The dirt flew. We found out, though, that tunneling in sand
isn’t all it might be cracked up to be. The digging is easy, but the
roof don’t stay up. I had my head and shoulders through under the logs
tunneling away while Mark took my sand and threw it out of the hold.
Maybe I went at it too hard, or maybe it would have done what it did,
anyhow, but all of a sudden the whole roof gave way and came down onto
me kerplunk. It buried my head and arms and shoulders, and I want to
stop right here to say that I was the scairtest boy in the state of
Michigan. I thought I was a goner. I couldn’t breathe or holler or
anything. The sand was so heavy I couldn’t move, and I guess if Mark
hadn’t been right there to see what was going on I’d have smothered,
sure. He didn’t waste any time, though, but grabbed me by the feet and
yanked me out a-kiting. I was full of sand—eyes, mouth, ears—and it was
a couple of minnits before I could force myself back to work. But I did,
and Mark patted me on the back. That made me feel pretty good, I tell
you.
From then on there wasn’t any tunneling to speak of. All we had to do
was clear out the sand that had caved in. In an hour we had a hole big
enough to crawl through, and only had to tear out the sod that hadn’t
caved in to get out. It was half past two by Mark’s watch. We crept back
to the loose boards and got into the house again.
It was hard to wake Tallow and Plunk, but we did.
“You f-f-fellows have got to stay here,” says Mark. “Binney and I will
g-go. Binney’s got a right to go ’cause it’s his u-uncle, and I got to
go to l-look after things.”
There wasn’t any argument about that.
“Jiggins and C-Collins mustn’t discover we’ve gone for a l-long time,”
says Mark. “You two have g-g-got to act like four. Make ’em think we’re
all h-here. Understand?”
“Sure,” says Tallow and Plunk.
“And when they f-f-find out, don’t tell which way we went.”
“What d’you take us for?” Tallow says.
“We’ll git back as s-s-soon as we can,” Mark told them. “But maybe it’ll
be a w-week.”
“We’ll be all right,” says Plunk.
Mark turned to me. “Git that p-pail of paint,” he says, “and the brush.
I’ll carry the hammer and a paper of tacks and that chunk of c-c-canvas
hangin’ there.”
“What for?” I asked.
“We’re goin’ in a c-canoe, hain’t we?”
“Yes.”
“D-down a river we don’t know?”
“Yes.”
“With stones and d-dead-heads in it?”
“Sure.”
“If we hit one of ’em, what’ll h-happen?”
“We’ll bust the canoe.”
“That,” says he, “is the reason for the p-p-paint and things.”
Now, I never would have thought of that. It was just another example of
the way he took precautions and got ready for accidents that might never
happen. But don’t you ever think he wasn’t right this time. If he hadn’t
brought that mess of stuff we—well, there’s no telling what would have
happened to us. Anyhow, it was mighty lucky we had it along.
“Come on, Binney,” says Mark.
Now that the practical explaining was over, Mark got back to his game of
Union prisoners again.
“G-g-good-by, comrades,” says he. “I’ve been chosen to go f-f-first.
Maybe I won’t never see you again.”
He looked like he was going to cry. Maybe you won’t think this is so,
but when Mark Tidd was pretending anything he pretended so hard he
really believed he wasn’t pretending at all.
“The next man,” says he to me, “will start in f-five minnits if he don’t
hear the crack of a gun. If he d-d-does he better not come. That will
mean I was d-discovered—and killed, most likely.” He started through the
hole in the floor. “Five minnits,” says he, and disappeared. But he
poked his head up once more.
“G-gimme the clothes-line,” says he.
I handed it to him, and he disappeared for good.