I," said Hilary again to himself. "Well, maybe I
shall show 'em I can fight like a man!"

"Here, I say," said another voice: "why don't you two begin to stow away
these kegs?"

"Never you mind. You bring 'em down from the carts: we know what we're
doing."

There was a sound of departing footsteps, and Hilary listened intently.

"Ah!" said one of the men, "if I was the skipper I'd send the young Tom
chicken about his business; but the skipper says he knows too much."

"How long's he going to keep him then?"

"Altogether, I s'pose, unless he likes to join us."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, who was evidently moving something
heavy.

"Well, he might do worse, my lad. Anyhow, they ar'n't going to let him
go and bring that cutter down upon us."

"No, that wouldn't do. Lend a hand here. This bag's heavy. What's in
it?"

"I don't know. Feels like lead. P'r'aps it is."

"Think the cutter will hang about long?"

"How should I know? I say, though, how staggered them chaps was when
they got up to the rock and found no one to fight!"

"I wasn't there."

"Oh, no--more you wasn't. Come along, come along, lads. Here we are
waiting for stowage, and you talk about us keeping you waiting."

"You mind your own job," growled the voice that Hilary had heard finding
fault before.

There was more scuffling of feet, and then the two men went on talking.

"The cutter's sailors had come, of course, after the boy, and they
stumbled on the way through the rocks, just same as the boy did; and we
waited for 'em with a few sticks, and then give 'em as much as were good
for 'em, and then retreated, big Joey keeping the way till we had all
got up the rock, and then up he come in the dark, and you'd have laughed
fit to crack your sides to hear them down below whacking at the stones
with their cutlashes till they was obliged to believe we was gone, and
then they went back with their tails between their legs like a pack of
dogs."

The other man laughed as Hilary drank in all this, and learned how the
crew had been after him, and realised most thoroughly how it was that he
had been brought there, and also the ingenious plan by which the
smugglers and the political party with whom they seemed to be mixed up
contrived to throw their enemies off the scent. There was an interval,
during which the two men seemed to be very busy stowing away kegs and
packages, and then they went on again.

"Skipper of the cutter come next