rful
enough to enable him to make out the faces of the officers in the
stern-sheets, one of whom was the midshipman who had charge of the boat
at Rockabie pier.

Aleck watched the boats rowing shoreward and separating after a time,
one of the sloop's making for the Eilygugg cove, the other rowing in the
direction of the gap which led up to the depression in which lay the
Den.

Feeling that he would like to be at home if the boat entered their
private chasm, as the lad dubbed it, he turned back along the cliff and
reached the garden so as to descend to the mooring-place just in time to
see the cutter's boat framed in the opening, the dark rocks round and
above, and the little craft floating upon a background of opalescent sea
and sky.

"They can't have come right in," thought Aleck, and after a time he made
for the cliff again to get near the edge and look down, in time to see
that both boats were being rowed back to their respective vessels.

An hour after they were slowly gliding away in the direction of
Rockabie, their examination having been of the most perfunctory kind.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

"No, Master Aleck, not gone, as you may say, right off," replied Tom
Bodger, a few days later, as he adzed and planed and hammered away at
the kittiwake down in front of the natural boat-house. "They're
a-dodging of it, strikes me. King's skippers is artful when they wants
men. They just got enough of that smuggling lot aboard the sloop to
make the cap'n hungry for more, and, you mark my words, he'll keep away
so as to make the likely ones think they're safe, and then there'll come
a night when they'll find they arn't."

"Oh, I don't think so, Tom," said Aleck, opening a fresh packet of
glistening golden-hued copper nails. "I don't believe the press-gang
will come again."

"All right, Master Aleck, you go on thinking they won't, and I'll go on
thinking they will, and let's see who's right."

"But what makes you suspicious, Tom?"

"Old sperience, sir," said the man, with a grim smile. "I 'member how
we used to pick 'em up aboard the Hajax--`our Jacks,' as the lads used
to call her. That's just how our old skipper used to work it; and if I
were Eben Megg and didn't want to go to sea I should give up smuggling
and take to an inland job, where he warn't known, and then he'd be safe.
Ha! Them's the sort," he said, taking the fresh nails. "No rusting
about them coppery nails."

"No; but uncle says you're to be