“Thoroughly. But aren’t the tobacco casks too big and too heavy to haul up the cliffs?”
“Look here, young fellow,” growled the man; “none o’ your nonsense. You’d better be off before you get hurt. That’s your way back.”
“Is it?” said Aleck. “Then I’m not going back till I choose. I say, should you talk like this to one of the Revenue sloop’s men if he came ashore?”
“Oh, we know how to talk to that sort if he comes our way,” said the man, with a chuckling laugh; “and they knows it, too, and don’t come.”
“Nor the press-gang either, eh?” said Aleck, mockingly.
Up to that moment the man’s fierce face had alone been seen, but at the word press-gang he gave a violent start and rose to his knees, upon which he hobbled close up to the edge of the shelf upon which he had perched himself.
“Oh, that’s it, is it, my lad, eh?” he growled, shaking his fist savagely. “Then, look here. If the press-gang—cuss ’em!—ever does come along here we shall know who put ’em up to it, and if they take any of our chaps—mind yer they won’t take all, and them behind’ll know what to do. I’m not going to threaten, but if someone wasn’t sunk in his boat, or had a bit o’ rock come tumbling down on him when he was taking up his net under the cliffs, it would be strange to me. D’yer hear that?”
“Oh, yes, I hear that,” retorted Aleck. “So you won’t threaten, eh? What do you call that?”
“Never you mind what I call it, youngster; and what I says I means. So now you know.”
“Yes,” said Aleck, coolly; “now I know that what people say about you and your gang up at Eilygugg is quite true.”