to ketch the
_Shark_!" he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood
present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to
receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a
wind taking him on a very dangerous lee shore.

So the old fisherman did not look at his passengers, but began thinking
hard again. He couldn't take those two home, he said to himself, for,
if he did, at their first words he'd be seized by some one or every one,
for they all hated him for being so well off, and monopolising so much
of the lobster catching, especially Jemmy Carnach. Then Sir Francis
Ladelle and the Doctor would come; he'd be locked up, sent by the smack
over to England, and be tried, and all his savings perhaps be seized.
Just, too, when he had a chance of doubling them by taking the contents
of the cave.

He had arrived at this point with great difficulty when the strange
silence on board the boat, which had so far only been broken by the
lapping of the water and the creaking of the yard, was broken by Vince,
who cried excitedly, as he stood up in the boat:

"Look, look, Mike! Nearly everybody's yonder on the cliff. They've
heard the firing and the explosion, and they're watching the cutter
chase the schooner."

Mike rose too, and with beating hearts the two boys stood trying to make
out who was on the look-out; but the distance was too great to
distinguish faces. Still they stood, steadying each other by clapping
hands on shoulders, quite unconscious of the fact that the old man was
now gazing at them with a very peculiar expression of countenance, that
foreboded anything but good.

All at once, they both lurched and nearly fell, for Daygo's mind was
made up, and he thrust his oar deep down, changing the boat's course
suddenly, and making the sail flap.

"Here, what are you doing?" cried Vince, forced by this to speak to the
old man at last.

"Think I want to run my boat into that curran' an' get on the rocks?
Sit down, will you, and keep outer the way of the sheet."

For answer the boys went forward, quite out of his way, and the boat
rushed on again for some ten minutes before they spoke again, though
they had been looking about with gathering uneasiness, for they were
growing suspicious, but ashamed to speak because the idea seemed to be
absurd.

At last Vince said--

"He's making a precious long tack, Mike, and I don't know of any big
current here."

Mik