Chapter 31 - Page 2

home in the roughest situations, and so swift of foot, though round of cheek, that the smugglers gloried in her and the good luck which sat upon her prow. They called her "the lugger," though her rig was widely different from that, and her due title was "bilander." She was very deeply laden now, and, having great capacity, appeared an unusually tempting prize.

This grand armada of invasion made its way quite leisurely. Off the Dogger Bank they waited for the last news, and received it, and the whole of it was to their liking, though the fisherman who brought it strongly advised them to put back again. But Captain Lyth had no such thought, for the weather was most suitable for the bold scheme he had hit upon. "This is my last run," he said, "and I mean to make it a good one." Then he dressed himself as smartly as if he were going to meet Mary Anerley, and sent a boat for the skippers of the Good Hope, and the Crown of Gold, who came very promptly and held counsel in his cabin.

"I'm thinking that your notion is a very good one, captain," said the master of the bilander, Brown, a dry old hand from Grimsby.

"Capital, capital; there never was a better," the master of the ketch chimed in, "Nettlebones and Carroway--they will knock their heads together!"

"The plan is clever enough," replied Robin, who was free from all mock-modesty, "But you heard what that old Van Dunck said. I wish he had not said it."

"Ten tousan' tuyfels--as the stingy old thief himself says--he might have held his infernal croak. I hate to make sail with a croak astern; 'tis as bad as a crow on forestay-sail."

"All very fine for you to talk," grumbled the man of the bilander to the master of the ketch; "but the bad luck is saddled upon me this voyage. You two get the gilgoes, and I the bilboes!"

"Brown, none of that!" Captain Lyth said, quietly, but with a look which the other understood; "you are not such a fool as you pretend to be. You may get a shot or two fired at you; but what is that to a Grimsby man? And who will look at you when your hold is broached? Your game is the easiest that any man can play--to hold your tongue and run away."

"Brown, you share the profits, don't you see?" the ketch man went on, while the other looked glum; "and what risk do you take for it? Even if they collar you, through your own clumsiness, what is there for them to do? A Grimsby man is a grumbling man, I have heard ever since I was that high. I'll change berths with you, if you choose, this minute."

"You could never do it," said the Grimsby man, with that high contempt which abounds where he was born--"a boy like you! I should like to see you try it."

"Remember, both of you," said Robin Lyth,