“What was it, my lad? Why, that warn’t no fog bank lying low on the water, but the harbour wall. Why, we should ha’ gone smash on it in another jiffy, stove in, and sunk, for there’s no getting up the place this side.”
“Are you sure it was?”
“Sartain. We’re all right, though, now, and it’s done us good, for I know where we are, and I think we can get away now unless the boat’s headed us once more.”
“Keep her away a little more then. Ah! Hark at Eben! He sounds as if he’s coming to.”
The smuggler was very far from being dead, for he muttered a few words, and then all at once they heard the backs of his hands strike the boat sharply, while to their horror he yelled out the word “Cowards!”
Tom Bodger was active enough, in spite of his misfortune, as he abundantly proved—perhaps never more so than on this occasion—when again, with almost the action of a toad, he leaped right upon the smuggler, driving him back just as he was trying to rise, and covering his face with a broad chest and smothering his next cries.
Then Aleck grew more horrified than ever, for a tremendous struggle began, the smuggler, evidently under the impression that he was in the hands of the press-gang, fighting hard for his liberty, bending himself up and calling to his companions for help. But his voice sounded dull and stifled, and in spite of his strength Tom’s position gave him so great an advantage that he was able to keep him down.
“Mind, mind, Tom,” whispered Aleck; “you are smothering him.”
“And a precious good thing too, Master Aleck. He’ll say thankye when he knows. Why, if I let him have his own way he’d—lie still, will yer?—want to have the press-gang down upon us. Lookye here, messmet, if you don’t lie quiet I’ll make Master Aleck come and sit on yer too.”
“But I’m afraid, Tom.”