He went to his skiff and took out the bait pail and chucked it and we pulled the skiff out of the water and turned it upside down. Then he took the two big screw eyes. He started one into the bottom of the skiff by hitting it with a rock and then screwed it all the way in, and then he put in the other the same way. One was nearer the bow and the other nearer the stern. Then we swung the skiff around so the stern was shoreward and the bow toward the river and Jibby did a thing that seemed almost crazy. He untied the end of his trot-line from the tree and slipped the end through the two screw eyes in the keel of the skiff and tied the end of the trot-line to a tough root near the edge of the river. Then we heaved the skiff over and pushed it out into the water so the stern just rested on shore, and went back and sat down. I began to see what he was up to. He had the skiff strung on the trot-line, under water. Those Romer bullies would row across the river but when they got just so far they would come to the end of the trot-line, where it was tied to the big anchor stone, and there the skiff would stop. I chuckled. “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.”