"Bah!" Mr. Parsons expectorated in disgust, then attacked the Service in earnest.
"What do they ever do," he declared, "but send a dinky little gunboat up and down the coast?—a boat that every smuggler recognizes twenty miles away and avoids accordingly. What they need to do is to place men on land, not ten miles off it. Saltern Bay is honeycombed with coves and beaches where the smugglers can land and no one the wiser. Have a few men spying up and down the land. Let them keep their eyes open and find out the smugglers' cache—then make a raid. A few raids and smuggling wouldn't be so brisk, for smugglers can no more afford to lose their goods than other people."
Mr. Parsons' colleague nodded in agreement.
"I seem to remember hearing that the Customs at Saltern attempted something of that kind," hazarded the captain.
"Bah!" said Mr. Parsons. "Old man Johnson, sixty if he's a day, made a daylight trip to 'Madam's Notch' and found half a case of brandy and a few pounds of tobacco. There's those who believe the smugglers placed it there on purpose. I'm one of them. There's others who say that Johnson will never be a poor man if he lives to be a hundred and that the smugglers have made his inactivity worth while. He ought to be kicked out."
"He has been." Dare could not resist the opportunity of being the conveyor of new and interesting information.
Mr. Parsons and his colleague turned surprised looks on their informant.
"What's that!" ejaculated Mr. Parsons incredulously.
"Didn't you know?" said the captain easily, saving Dare the trouble of repeating his statement. "Johnson resigned about three weeks ago. Captain Stanley, this young man's father, has been appointed in his place."
"News to me," confessed Mr. Parsons.