Of course, we went ashore. There would have been a rebellion right there if we hadn’t. We walked back through the low ground and found a lane running up to the house. It led to the barn-yard and around a low shed where the farmer kept his wagon. Where it went we went. We straggled around the corner of that shed into the yard, and then we stopped. We stopped sudden and short, and everybody said something startled, for there, coming toward us like he meant business and a good deal of it, was the biggest white bulldog I ever saw. Maybe he looked bigger than he was, but, allowing for that, he was plenty big.
I don’t know what the rest did. Right there Binney Jenks was a pretty busy kid with no time to fool with anybody. I turned and went up the fence and scrambled on top of that shed so quick it must have looked like I did it in one jump. Collins was about a tenth of a second behind me. Mark and Jiggins, being so fat, weren’t quite as quick, but they did considerable moving when you take everything into consideration. Both of them were on the fence and the dog was jumping at their feet. Mark got on the shed next, and that left nobody but Jiggins in reach. I never saw a dog put his mind to getting a man the way that bulldog did. He acted like it was necessary for him to have a chunk of Jiggins, and it looked, too, as though he was going to come pretty close to getting what he was after.
Collins and I sat still. We were sort of startled out of our wits, I guess, but not Mark. He was busy the minnit he got on the roof. By luck there was a long pole up there—about twenty feet long, I guess; Mark grabbed it and crouched at the very edge of the roof. Then Mister Dog jumped for Jiggins. Maybe you don’t think he was a surprised animal! Just as he jumped Mark poked, and he poked good and hard. The pole took the dog in the ribs, and you could hear him say, “Urgh,” or something like that. He went kerflop and head over heels.
The dog wasn’t through, though. He took two more licks at Jiggins before the fat man could clamber onto the shed, and then sat down and scowled at us. If he couldn’t get us he was going to see we didn’t get away.
It was sort of funny. I looked over at Mark and says, “How d’you like the pie?”