“Think he’ll stop?”
“Stop? Ay, for a month, but what he’ll ketch whoever it is. Bound to say they’ve been walking off with the silk and lace at a pretty tidy rate.”
“They’ll be too artful to come again, p’r’aps.”
“Ah! that’s what some one said about the mice, but they walked into the trap at last.”
“What’ll he do if he does ketch ’em?”
“Well, there, you know what old Jarks is. He never do stand any nonsense. I should say he’d have a haxiden’ with ’em, same as he did with that French douane chap. Pistol might go off, or he might take ’em aboard and drop ’em—”
Murmur, murmur, murmur—and then silence.
The speakers had evidently turned away from the mouth of the seal hole, and the boys did not hear the end of the sentence.
“Oh!” groaned Mike faintly.
“I say, Ladle, if you make a noise like that they’ll hear you, and come and fetch us out.”