the Nark
approached until only a boat's length away. On the deck of the
schooner, only the skipper stood. The seamen had gone below, their
tasks completed.

"Look here, my man," said Lieutenant Summers, "you may be outside the
three-mile limit, but you are drawing the line pretty fine. What are
your papers?"

The old skipper looked at him shrewdly, quizzically, from out his
ambush of whiskers. A slow grin broke over his features.

"Ye know well as I we'm outside the three-mile limit," he said. "So I
don't mind tellin' ye. I got liquor aboard. But my papers is all
clear, an' ye can't touch me. I'm from Nassau in the Bahamas for St.
John. Two British possessions. An' I'm on my course."

Lieutenant Summers's face grew red. Captain Folsom's eyes twinkled,
and the boys saw one of the Nark's crew, an old salt, put up a big
palm to hide a smile.

"The old shellback has our skipper," whispered Captain Folsom to the
boys. "He has him on the hip. We are outside the three-mile limit,
undoubtedly. To think of the old Yankee's spunk in telling us he has
liquor aboard. His papers will be as he says, too, but just the same
that liquor will never reach St. John. It is destined for a landing on
our own coast."

Lieutenant Summers also was of the opinion apparently that he had been
foiled. And little as he relished the fact that the old skipper was
laughing at him up his sleeve, there was naught he could do about it.
However, he decided to pay a visit to the "Molly M," for he called:

"Stand by to receive a boat. I am coming aboard."

Presently, the boys saw the little boat dancing over the waves, then
Lieutenant Summers climbed to the deck of the schooner, and he and the
old skipper disappeared together down the companionway.

Awaiting his return, Captain Folsom enlightened the boys about the
difficulties of preventing liquor from being smuggled into the
country.

"As you can see from this instance," he said, "the traffic is carried
on openly, or under only a thin coating of camouflage. That boat fully
intends, no doubt, to land its cargo along our coast somewhere. But
her papers are all in order and as long as she stays outside the
three-mile limit we can do nothing about it. Of course, we can hang to
her heels and prevent her from landing. But while we are doing that,
other smugglers slip ashore somewhere else. It's a weary business to
try and enforce such a law at first. And, what makes it harder," he
concluded, his bro