wonderfully, and looked like a man
already. Mrs Harrigan was equally complimentary, and I could not help
feeling myself a person of mighty importance. I was very glad to find
that my old friend was perfectly contented with his wife, and that he
made himself very useful to her, so that there was every prospect of
their being comfortable together. The house was full of lodgers; but
there was a little room which they insisted on my occupying. They
themselves lived in a back parlour, where I spent the evening with them.
I slept at their house, and the next morning returned on board the
cutter. We were ordered to keep an especial look-out for Myers, whose
lugger was reported to have run more cargoes than any free-trader among
the vast numbers engaged in the illicit traffic. She belonged to Beere,
a small town on the Dorsetshire coast, in West Bay. It is a pretty,
quiet little place, and consists of one long, broad street, built in the
centre of a valley reaching close down to the water's edge, with white
cliffs on either side of it. The lugger was often seen off there; but
we could not then touch her, as she was never found with anything in her
to enable us to prove that she was engaged in smuggling. Myers,
whenever on these occasions we paid him a visit, was always the politest
of men; and a stranger might suppose that he had a vast regard for all
king's officers, and for us especially; and yet in reality no man hated
us more cordially, or would more readily have worked us harm.

Cruising after smugglers is not the noblest work, perhaps, in which one
can be engaged; but it is necessary, not altogether unprofitable, and at
times highly exciting. In the war time, the smugglers had large armed
vessels, which set the king's cruisers at defiance, and seldom failed to
show fight. When I was in the _Serpent_, they were frequently armed;
but their business was to run, and they never fired unless in hopes of
knocking away the spars of a pursuer, or, at the last extremity, to
defend themselves.

I should be very ungrateful to old Hanks if I omitted to mention his
kindness to me, and the pains he took to give me instruction in my
profession. Among other accomplishments, he taught me one of which he
was not himself a little proud.

"D'Arcy," said he one day to me, "I've a regard for you, and I'll put
you in the way, my lad, of gaining your bread, should other trades
fail."

"What is it, Hanks?" I asked. "I am glad to