"I don't funk anything," said Dicky, "bar making an ape of myself. Keep your hair on, Oswald. Look here. Suppose we get a keg with nothing in it—or just water. We should have all the fun, and if we were collared we should have the laugh of that coastguard brute."
Oswald agreed, but he made it a condition that we should call it the keg of brandy, whatever was in it, and Dicky consented.
Smuggling is a manly sport, and girls are not fitted for it by nature. At least Dora is not; and if we had told Alice she would have insisted on dressing as a boy and going too, and we knew Father would not like this. And we thought Noël and H.O. were too young to be smugglers with any hope of success. So Dicky and I kept the idea to ourselves.
We went to see the Viking man the next day. It took us some time to make him understand what we wanted, but when he did understand he slapped his leg many times, and very hard, and declared that we were chips of the old block.
"But I can't go for to let you," he said; "if you was nailed it's the stone jug, bless your hearts."
So then we explained about the keg really having only water in, and he slapped his leg again harder than ever, so that it would really have been painful to any but the hardened leg of an old sea-dog. But the water made his refusals weaker, and at last he said—
"Well, see here, Benenden, him as owns the Mary Sarah, he's often took out a youngster or two for the night's fishing, when their pa's and ma's hadn't no objection. You write your pa, and ask if you mayn't go for the night's fishing, or you get Mr. Charteris to write. He knows it's all right, and often done by visitors' kids, if boys. And if your pa says yes, I'll make it all right with Benenden. But mind, it's just a night's fishing. No need to name no kegs. That's just betwixt ourselves."
So we did exactly as he said. Mr. Charteris is the clergyman. He was quite nice about it, and wrote for us, and Father said "Yes, but be very careful, and don't take the girls or the little ones."
We showed the girls the letter, and that removed the trifling ill-feeling that had grown up through Dick and me having so much secret talk about kegs and not telling the others what was up.
Of course we never breathed a word about kegs in public, and only to each other in bated breaths.