going to see if I can't get out; and if that beggar hears me I must try
and gammon him. Wonder whether I can come that _chicker, chicker,
chick, chack, chack, chack_, like one of them big monkeys. I did manage
to imitate it pretty fairly time back when I teased that one as Captain
Down used to make a pet of. Well, why shouldn't I now?"

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

PETER PEGG SAYS "YUSS."

"Yuss," said Peter Pegg, as he sat in the profound darkness, for it was
some hours before the moon would rise, and he was solacing himself with
a piece of the bread-crust, which was terribly dry and exceedingly
hard--"yuss, this is precious nice tackle for a fellow's teeth. Wants
nibbling like a rat. Yuss, what I have telled the young governor sounds
'most as easy as cutting butter, only not quite. I can get the
helephant up to the door here, and I don't see much hardship in mounting
him and riding off; only how am I to manage to get him here at the right
time? Ah, well, I'm getting on. The governor's better, and I have got
a spear, and, so to speak, I have got a helephant, and a fine one, too.
So I am not going to give up because some of the job is hard. This 'ere
bit of bread is as hard as wood, but I am getting through with it, and
that's what I mean to do about our escape. Where you can't take a fair
bite at anything, why, you must nibble; and I must go on nibbling now to
find some way of getting out of this here ramshackle place. If I can
just contrive a hole so that I can climb on the roof whenever I like,
and be able to cover it up again so that these beauties don't know, I
don't feel a bit doubtful of being able to slide down to the eaves, and
then hold tight and get my toes in here and my toes in there, and
climbing back'ard till one gets to the ground. As to getting back
again--oh, any one could do that. He will do it as well as I can as
soon as he is better. Now then, ready? Yuss. Then here's to begin."

He rose softly, stepped quietly over the leaves, and deftly climbed up
the door again, where he applied his eye to the ragged lookout.

"My, it is dark!" he said to himself. "There must be a regular river
fog floating over the place. I can't see a star."

He stopped peering out and listening, but everything was so black that
he could not even distinguish the tree opposite to him beneath which the
sentry had taken his post.

"So still," muttered the lad, "that I don't believe he can be there. If
he was