“Scratch a bully and you find a coward,” Jibby said. “My Grandfather Parmenter used to say that, and he was a wise man. He had a nose like mine. Scratch a bully and find a coward.”
“That’s all right enough,” I said, “but what are you going to gain by it? We could run away and they couldn’t find us, and then we could tell our fathers and they wouldn’t let the Romers hurt us.”
“And they have the map,” said Jibby. “If they look at it close enough, they can understand it. They’ll see Wampus and Skippy and Tad by the sycamore and know that is the big dot, and they’ll know the cross on the map is the grape tree. They’ll have it cleaned out before Uncle Beeswax can get here. And I like Uncle Beeswax. He’s my friend. He trusted us with the map. I’m going to save those grapes for him.”
Well, Cawl Romer and his brother Hen came back and they acted mean and rough. They chucked our axe and our rake into Jibby’s skiff as if they didn’t care what damage they did, and they threw in their baskets and left ours on the shore. Then they made me get into the bow seat and they took the oars, and they made Jibby push off and hop into the stern seat.
“And no talk out of you!” Cawl said.
“Keeko!” Jibby said.
“Keeko muk-muk,
Chuck-a-wah chang cho!”
“That’s magic,” Cawl Romer told Hen, sneering-like. Then he said to Jibby: “You can’t fool me! That’s no Congo magic talk. I don’t believe you ever saw the Congo. That’s more like some old Chinese laundry talk or Flatfoot Indian.”
Well, it didn’t seem like much of a place for magic to work, even if there was such a thing. Miles and miles of blue sky, and the sun shining, and the big river rushing along, and we just plain boys, and the two Romers just everyday big bullies. Hen and Cawl pulled at the oars and sweated, too, for it is no easy job to row across the river there. You have to row more than half upstream or the current will carry you half a mile below where you want to go by the time you get across. And they were in a hurry, too. Uncle Beeswax was liable to come rowing down the river any time, and he was no sort of man to mix in with when he thought he had a fair right to a bee tree or a grape tree. Even big bullies like the Romers would steer clear of him then; all they wanted was to get across the river and clean up the wild grapes before Uncle Beeswax came, and all Jibby wanted was to hold them back long enough for Uncle Beeswax to show up. So Jibby chanted again.
“Keeko! Keeko!
Chuck-a-muck-a-mayo!
Chip-la, chip-la, chuck chang cho!”
he chanted, or something like that, and he took the tip of his nose in his fingers and wiggled it back and forth.
“Stop that!” Hen Romer said, as cross as a bear. “Don’t you put any magic on us!”
“Aw, pshaw!” Cawl Romer said. “Don’t worry about him; he can’t magic a sick cat.”
But just the same he began to frown a little.
“What’s the matter with this boat?” he said. “I wouldn’t have this boat for a gift. I never knew a boat to pull as hard as this boat pulls.”
I knew what was the matter. The screw eyes on the bottom of the skiff had come to Jibby’s hook-lines on his trotline and were dragging them along the trotline the way Uncle Beeswax had said a big fish might.
“Row, why don’t you?” Cawl shouted over his shoulder at Hen.
“I am rowing as hard as I can,” Hen shouted back. “Row some yourself and don’t make me do it all.”
Every stroke they took the screw eyes gathered up another hook-line and added it to those they were already dragging. The Romers panted and puffed and pulled until their eyes stuck out an inch, almost, but they could just barely make the skiff move.
“Plenty keeko!” Jibby said, and stopped chanting.
“Pull, why don’t you?” Cawl shouted at Hen again.
They did pull, too. Out there in the middle of the river, with the current rushing the water past the skiff and the skiff pointed halfway upstream and the shores a good distance away, no one can tell whether a skiff is moving much or not. Those two Romers buckled down hard and strained every muscle and did their level best. They got madder and madder and scolded each other, and the boat hardly moved an inch at a stroke. They kept looking over their shoulders at the Buffalo Island shore
