“Well, that is in my way. Yes, I’ll do that. Now then, alongside there! Tumble up, you fellows! Marines, take charge, and see them into the hold.”
“Au revoir, mes enfans,” said Jacques—“au revoir, if zey do not hang me. Good boys, bose of you, but von vord. Old Daygo he is a rascaille, an old scamp; but he serve me vairy true, and it vas I tempt him vis monnaie to keep my secrete after he show me ze cavern. You vill not tell of him. He is so old, if you send him to ze prisone he soon die.”
“Oh, very well; we won’t tell tales of him—eh, Mike?”
“I should like to knock his old head off; but you’ve been so civil to us, Captain Jacques, we will not.”
The captain smiled and nodded, and then followed his crew into the hold, where they were shut up with a couple of marines on guard.
By this time the cutter was in full sail, in chase of the schooner, which had reached out for a long distance, to get clear of the long reefs of dangerous rocks, running far away from the northern shore of the island. She was evidently, in fact, obliged, as she had taken that course, to tack at last, and then run straight almost back again; but it would lead her along by the north coast and probably mean escape.
“Schooner captain doesn’t know his way through the Narrows, then,” said Vince thoughtfully, as they stood watching the now distant schooner.
“I suppose not. Why, he could easily have got round and saved all that.”
“I say,” cried Vince, “never mind about old Jacques: smugglers are blackguards, and ought to be caught.”
“Yes, of course.”