"Hoped we should puncture our tyres, no doubt!" said Dick indignantly. "By sheer good luck I saw them in time, and we carried our machines the whole length of the lane. But it was a sneaking trick to play, and we'll be even with him. We owe him a good long score now, and I have it in my mind to just jolly well pay him out." Needless to say, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Winstanley were aware of these fell designs against old Captain Vernon, with whom they had always managed to keep on excellent terms of neighbourly good-will, and, knowing full well that their schemes would be promptly forbidden if they ventured to divulge them, the boys seized the opportunity when "the mater" and "the governor" were out at a dinner-party to carry into execution their plan of revenge. Edward declined altogether to be a party to the deed. "Beastly bad form, I call it!" he yawned. "You don't catch me leaving a decent arm-chair to go ragging an antiquated old fossil of a sea-captain. As for you two girls, I suppose you can do as you like, but don't let the mater catch you at it, that's all!" And, stretching out his long legs on a second chair, he took up a copy of Punch, and resigned himself to ease and comfort. "That's all jolly well for the fifth form," said Dick, "but it's a little too good for us chaps. We're off now, and if Cathy and Phil like to join the show, they can, and if they don't, they may stop at home and hem dusters." It was extremely naughty of us, but we wanted so much to see what happened; so we thought if we followed the boys at a discreet distance we should not be exactly aiding and abetting, and yet we should come in for a full share of all that went on. It was a dark evening, with only a fitful gleam from a watery moon which occasionally showed itself behind the driving clouds, and the unlighted village street seemed quiet and deserted. The captain lived in the end house of an old-fashioned red-brick terrace. Though he had a good garden at the side and back, his front-door and the bow-window of his dining-room were flush with the road, and by flattening our noses against the glass, we were able to peep through a crevice in the red curtains and watch him, as he sat in a particularly easy arm-chair, with a cigar between his lips and a newspaper in his hand. "Looks much too comfortable!" muttered Dick. "Just wait till I'm ready and we'll make him sit up!" He had been cautiously fastening a piece of cobblers' wax to the centre of the window-frame. This wax had a hole in it, through which a long piece of string was threaded, having a button at the end, and it was so arranged that the button should hang down over the glass, while Dick, standing under cover of the trees on the opposite side of the road, held the other end of the string in his hand. "Are you well out of sight?" he whispered. "Don't give the thing away by flapping your skirts about and giggling. Now! Mum's the word, and you'll see some sport!"