or lamb up there loadin' the hosses, and to think I bore
and reared en for this! If you let one of they fellows lay hands on my
Phoby I'll scratch out ivery eye in your head . . ."

"Stand by, Tim," says the captain quietly. "Drat the boat! If she
keeps bobbiting about like that I shall hit her, sure 'nuff!"
_Bang!_ went the little gun, and kicked backwards clean over its
carriage. The shot whizzed about six feet above the boat, and plunged
into the heaving swell between it and the cutter. "Bit too near, that.
I don't want to hurt Roger Wearne, though he _do_ make such tempting,
ugly faces."

"But what do they want? What are they after?" stuttered the preacher.

"They're after my Phoby!" cried Mrs. Geen.

"Not a bit of it," said Captain John good-humouredly. "From all I can
see it's the preacher here they want to collar."

"_Me!_" screams the poor man--"_me!_"

"Well, if you _will_ go letting off rockets. I dunno what it costs up
to Walsall, or wherever you come from, but down in these parts 'tis a
hundred pound or twelve calendar months."

The preacher turned white and began to shake all of a sudden like a
leaf. "But I didn't mean--I had no idea--you don't intend to tell me--"
he stammered.

"Here, Tummels!" Captain John hailed a man who came running down to lend
a hand with the guns. "Take the preacher here and fix him on one of the
horses; sling a keg each side of him if he looks like tumbling off.
Sorry to hurry you, sir," he explained; "but 'tis for your good.
You must clear out of this before the officers get sight of your face,
and I don't know how much longer I can frighten 'em off. When you get
up to Trenowl you can cast loose and run, and it mayn't be time wasted
if you make up an _alibi_ as you go along. It don't seem hospitable, I
grant ee, but as a smuggler you're too enterprising for this little
out-o'-the-way cove."

Tummels led the preacher away in too much of a daze to answer.
He opened his mouth, but at that moment _bang!_ went Hosking with
another of the guns. By and by Captain John let out a chuckle as he saw
the poor man moving up the cliff track, swaying between two kegs and
clutching at his horse's mane every time Tummels smacked the beast on
the rump. The horse he rode was almost the last. By seven o'clock the
boys had cleared the whole of their cargo, and still the preventive boat
hung in the mouth of the Cove, pulling and backing and waiting for the
chance Captain John