begun to break, and still he never come. ‘Thunder,’ I
says, ‘what do you make out of this? — ain’t it sus-
picious?’ ‘Land!’ Hal says, ‘do you reckon he’s
playing us? — open the paper!’ I done it, and by
gracious there warn’t anything in it but a couple of
little pieces of loaf-sugar! THAT’S the reason he could
set there and snooze all night so comfortable. Smart?
Well, I reckon! He had had them two papers all fixed
and ready, and he had put one of them in place of
t’other right under our noses.
“We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight
off, was to make a plan; and we done it. We would
do up the paper again, just as it was, and slip in, very
elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and
let on WE didn’t know about any trick, and hadn’t any
idea he was a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores
of his’n; and we would stick by him, and the first
night we was ashore we would get him drunk and
search him, and get the di’monds; and DO for him,
too, if it warn’t too risky. If we got the swag, we’d
GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down and do for
us, sure. But I didn’t have no real hope. I knowed
we could get him drunk — he was always ready for
that — but what’s the good of it? You might search
him a year and never find —
“Well, right there I catched my breath and broke
off my thought! For an idea went ripping through my
head that tore my brains to rags — and land, but I felt
gay and good! You see, I had had my boots off, to
unswell my feet, and just then I took up one of them
to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel-
bottom, and it just took my breath away. You re-
member about that puzzlesome little screwdriver?”
“You bet I do,” says Tom, all excited.
“Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot
heel, the idea that went smashing through my head
was, I know where he’s hid the di’monds! You look
at this boot heel, now. See, it’s bottomed with a steel
plate, and the plate is fastened on with little screws.
Now there wasn’t a screw about that feller anywhere
but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a screwdriver,
I reckoned I knowed why.”
“Huck, ain’t it bully!” says Tom.
“Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and
slipped in and laid the paper of sugar on the berth,
and sat down soft and sheepish and went to listening to
Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty
soon, but I didn’t; I wasn’t ever so wide awake in my
life. I was spying out from under the shade of my
hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took me a
long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was
wrong, but at last I struck it. It laid over by the
bulkhead, and was nearly the color of the carpet. It
was a little round plug about as thick as the end of your
little finger, and I says to myself there’s a di’mond in
the nest you’ve come from. Before long I spied out
the plug’s mate .
“Think of the smartness and coolness of that
blatherskite! He put up that scheme on us and
reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead
and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd’n-
heads. He set there and took his own time to un-
screw his heelplates and cut out his plugs and stick in
the di’monds and screw on his plates again . He
allowed we would steal the bogus swag and wait all
night for him to come up and get drownded, and by
George it’s just what we done! I think it was power-
ful smart.”
“You bet your life it was!” says Tom, just full of
admiration.
CHAPTER IV.
THE THREE SLEEPERS
WELL, all day we went through the humbug of