Cormorant Crag: A Tale of the Smuggling Days

by George Manville Fenn

Daygo meets his Match.

It seemed to take a long time to hoist that sail, but at last it was well up, the yard creaking against the mast; and standing on their dignity now, and keeping the old man at a distance, the boys made no offer to take the sheet or steer, but let Daygo pass them as they sat amidships, one on each side, and he seated himself, hauled in the sheet, and thrust an oar over the stern to steer.

There was a nice breeze now, they were only about a mile from the shore, and as the boat danced merrily through the little waves a feeling of joy and exultation, to which the boys had long been strangers, filled their breasts. They took long, hungry looks at the shore, and then at the cutter racing along towards the great gull rock, at the schooner careening over as she ran on under all the canvas she could bear; and then back at the lugger, which by comparison seemed to limp along, with a scrub of a spar hoisted as a jury mast, far astern, in place of the fallen mizen, so as to steady her steering.

Then they looked at each other again, those two, as they sat face to face, neither speaking, and carefully avoiding even a glance at Daygo, feeling as they did the awkwardness of their position, and averse to meeting the old scoundrel’s eye.

Not that they would have met it, for Daygo was as full of discomfort as they, and with his eyes screwed up face one maze of wrinkles, he stared through between them as if looking at the prow, but really at the big patch of canvas in his sail.

For, as Daygo put it to himself, he was on the awkwardest bit of lee shore that he had ever sailed by in his life.

He had, as was surmised by the cook, caught sight of the Revenue cutter sailing by the north side of the Crag, and hurried down to his boat to warn Jacques or his companion; but, upon finding himself too late, he was making for home again, thinking that, as Jacques was taken and his lugger a prize to the cutter—which looked determined to follow up the schooner, probably to take her too—there would be no owner for the contraband goods still left in the cavern, unless that owner proved to be himself. There were two others, he mused—two who knew of the place and its treasure; but Captain Jacques was, according to the old fisherman’s theory, not the kind of man to stick at trifles when such great interests were at stake; and he felt quite satisfied that the two boys would never be seen at Cormorant Crag again. Some accident would happen to them—what accident was no business of his, he argued. They had got themselves into a terrible mess through their poking and prying about, and they must put up with the consequences. They might have fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds’ eggs, or they might have been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might have been capsized and drowned while they stole his boat—he called it “stole”—in any one of which cases, he said to himself, they’d never have come back to the Crag again, and it wouldn’t have been any business of his, so he wasn’t going to worry his brains. Old Jarks had grabbed ’em, and when he grabbed anything he didn’t let it go again.

Joe Daygo was a slow thinker, and all this took him a long time to hammer out; and he had just settled it comfortably, on his way home, when he caught sight of the pilot flag flying, and paid no heed.

“Don’t ketch me showing ’em the way through the Narrers to ketch the Shark!” he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a wind taking him on a very dangerous lee shore.

So the old fisherman did not look at his passengers, but began thinking hard again. He couldn’t take those two home, he said to himself, for, if he did, at their first words he’d be seized by some one or every one, for they all hated him for being so well off, and monopolising so much of the lobster catching, especially Jemmy Carnach. Then Sir Francis Ladelle and the Doctor would come; he’d be locked up, sent by the smack over to England, and be tried, and all his savings perhaps be seized. Just, too, when he had a chance of doubling them by taking the contents of the cave.