m.

While all his comrades had affected to laugh at these movements, Adam
had viewed them with anxiety--had seen the graveness of their import and
the disasters likely to arise from them; and at length his arguments had
so far prevailed that a little better regulation was made for the
working of signals and ensuring that they should be given and attended
to if required. In case of danger the rule was to burn a fire on
different heights of the cliff, and small huts were even erected for
that purpose; but the lighting of these fires was often delayed until
the last moment: what had become everybody's business was nobody's
business, and secure that, in any case, the cruisers were no more
willing to fight than the smugglers were wanting to be fought, hazards
were often incurred which with men whose silence could not be bought
(for up to that time every crew had had its go-between) would most
certainly have proved fatal.

Upon the present force no influence could as yet be got to bear, and, to
prove the temper of their dispositions, no sooner was it known to them
that three of the most daring of the Polperro vessels were absent than
they set to watching the place with such untiring vigilance that it
needed all the sharpness of those left behind to follow their movements
and arrange the signals so that they might warn their friends without
exciting undue suspicions among their enemies.

Night after night, in one place or another, the sheltered flicker of the
flame shone forth as a warning that any attempt to land would prove
dangerous, until, word being suddenly brought that the cruiser had gone
off to Polruan, out went the fire, and, an answering light showing that
at least one of the vessels was on the watch, when the morning dawned
the Stamp and Go was in and her cargo safe under water. The Lottery, she
said, had contrived to decoy the revenue-men away, hoping that by that
means the two smaller vessels might stand a chance of running in, but
from their having to part company and keep well away from each other,
the Stamp and Go, though certain the Cleopatra was not far off, had lost
sight of her.

The day passed away, the evening light had all but faded, when to the
watchers the Cleopatra, with crowded sail and aided by a south-west
wind, was seen trying to make the harbor, close followed by the
cruiser. The news flew over the place like lightning, and but a few
minutes seemed to have passed before all Polperro swarmed