place of the
fallen mizen, so as to steady her steering.

Then they looked at each other again, those two, as they sat face to
face, neither speaking, and carefully avoiding even a glance at Daygo,
feeling as they did the awkwardness of their position, and averse to
meeting the old scoundrel's eye.

Not that they would have met it, for Daygo was as full of discomfort as
they, and with his eyes screwed up face one maze of wrinkles, he stared
through between them as if looking at the prow, but really at the big
patch of canvas in his sail.

For, as Daygo put it to himself, he was on the awkwardest bit of lee
shore that he had ever sailed by in his life.

He had, as was surmised by the cook, caught sight of the Revenue cutter
sailing by the north side of the Crag, and hurried down to his boat to
warn Jacques or his companion; but, upon finding himself too late, he
was making for home again, thinking that, as Jacques was taken and his
lugger a prize to the cutter--which looked determined to follow up the
schooner, probably to take her too--there would be no owner for the
contraband goods still left in the cavern, unless that owner proved to
be himself. There were two others, he mused--two who knew of the place
and its treasure; but Captain Jacques was, according to the old
fisherman's theory, not the kind of man to stick at trifles when such
great interests were at stake; and he felt quite satisfied that the two
boys would never be seen at Cormorant Crag again. Some accident would
happen to them--what accident was no business of his, he argued. They
had got themselves into a terrible mess through their poking and prying
about, and they must put up with the consequences. They might have
fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds' eggs, or they might have
been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might
have been capsized and drowned while they stole his boat--he called it
"stole"--in any one of which cases, he said to himself, they'd never
have come back to the Crag again, and it wouldn't have been any business
of his, so he wasn't going to worry his brains. Old Jarks had grabbed
'em, and when he grabbed anything he didn't let it go again.

Joe Daygo was a slow thinker, and all this took him a long time to
hammer out; and he had just settled it comfortably, on his way home,
when he caught sight of the pilot flag flying, and paid no heed.

"Don't ketch me showing 'em the way through the Narrers