lague on the water-bailiff and
commissioners and kays and councils. I'll go bail there's smuggling
going on under their very noses. I'd have the law on the lot of them,
so I would."

Old Danny and old Jemmy knew the temper of their housemate--that he
was never happy save when he had somebody to higgle with--so they
paid no heed to his mutterings. But when Juan, having set the
potatoes to steam with a rag spread over them, went out for the salt
herrings, to where they hung to dry on a stick against the sunny side
of the porch, he was sure that above the click of the levers, the
boom and plash of the sea and the whistle of the wind, he could hear
a clamorous shout of many voices, like a wild cry of distress. Then
he hobbled back with a wizzened face of deadly pallor and told what
he had heard, and the shuttles were stopped, and there was silence in
the little house.

"It went by me same as the wind," said old Juan.

"Maybe it was the nightman," said old Danny.

At that old Jemmy nodded his head very gravely, and old Juan held on
to the lever handles; and through those precious minutes when the
crew of the schooner were fighting in the grip of death in the
darkness, these three old men, their nearest fellow creatures, half
dead, half blind, were held in the grip of superstitious fears.

"There again," cried old Juan; and through the door that he had left
open the cry came in above roar of wind and sea.

"It's men that's yander," said old Jemmy.

"Ay," said old Danny.

"Maybe it's a ship on the Carick," said old Juan.

"Let's away and look," said old Jemmy.

And then the three helpless old men, trembling and affrighted,
straining their dim eyes to see and their deaf ears to hear, and
clinging to each other's hands like little children, groped their
slow way to the beach. Down there the cries were louder than they had
been on the brows above.

"Mercy me, let's away to Lague for the boys," said old Juan; and
leaving behind them the voices that cried for help, the old men
trudged and stumbled through the dark lanes.

Lague was asleep, but the old men knocked, and the windows were
opened and night-capped heads thrust through. Very soon the house and
courtyard echoed with many footsteps, and the bell over the porch
rang out through the night, to call up the neighbors far and near.

Ross and Stean and Thurstan were the first to reach the shore, and
there they found the crew of the Peveril landed--every man safe a