ol to try and bribe that scoundrel. He'll be always bleeding me now.
I'd far better have set him at defiance and bid him do his worst. Bah!
I wish I was not such a coward."

"If I don't make him pay me pretty heavy for all this," said Zekle,
chuckling to himself, "I'll know the reason why. Five-and-twenty pounds
earned right slap off by just seeing that net pitched overboard! That's
cleverness, that is. Now I'll just go up to Mas'r Harry Paul and see
what he has got to say. P'r'aps there's a five or a ten to be made
there. It's better than fishing by a long way."

Harry Paul's home was a pleasant cottage on the cliff-side, and on Zekle
knocking the door was opened by Harry's widowed mother, who fetched her
son and left the two together.

"Ah, Zekle!" cried Harry frankly, as he held out his hand, "I'm afraid I
did not half thank you for helping to save my life."

"Oh! it don't matter, Mas'r Harry," said the fellow, smiling and
shuffling about.

"But it does matter," said Harry warmly; "and I am very grateful to you.
I am going into Penzance to-morrow, Zekle, and when I come back I'm
going to ask you to accept a silver watch to keep in remembrance of what
you did."

"Oh, you needn't do that, Mas'r Harry," replied Zekle; "but I thought
I'd like to tell you, don't you know, all about like how it happened. I
kinder felt it to be my duty, you see, and then if you liked to say to
me, `Here, Zekle Wynn, here's five or ten pounds for you for what you
did,' why you could, you know; but if you didn't, why it wouldn't matter
a bit, for I always feel as if it was a man's duty not to take no money
'less he's earned it."

"Ah!" said Harry, looking at him with quite an altered expression.

"You see, you don't know all," said Zekle mysteriously, as he went
softly to the door, peeped out, and then spoke in a whisper.

"Know all!" said Harry. "Why, I know I was nearly drowned."

"Yes," said Zekle, going closer to him and taking hold of his pilot
jacket, "you was nearly drownded; but how was it?"

"Some of your pile of mackerel net fell overboard and covered me up. It
was very careless of you people."

"Mack'rel nets don't tumble overboard and nigh upon drownd people
without somebody makes 'em," said Zekle with a cunning leer.

"Somebody makes them!" said Harry with his eyes flashing. "Why, you
don't mean to say that anybody threw that net over me as I swam round!"

"Oh, no!" said Zekle, "I wouldn't say such a th