“What do people say?” shouted the man. “What people?”
“The Rockabie folk.”
“And what do they say?”
“That you’re a set of smugglers, and, worse still, wreckers when you get a chance, and don’t stop at robbery or murder. One of the fishermen—I won’t say his name—said you were a regular gang of pirates.”
“The Rockabie fishermen are a set o’ soft-headed fools,” snarled the man. “But what do I care for all they say? Let ’em prove it; and, look here, if we’re as bad as that you folk up at the Den aren’t safe.”
“Which means that you threaten the captain, my uncle,” cried Aleck, defiantly.
“Are you going to tell him what I said?”
“Perhaps I am,” said Aleck; “perhaps I’m not. I’m going to do just as I please all along this coast, for it’s free to everybody, and my uncle has ten times the rights here that you people at the fishermen’s cottages have. You’ve just been talking insolence to me, so let’s have no more of it. This comes of the captain, my uncle, being kind and charitable to you people time after time when someone has been ill.”
The man growled out something in a muttering way.
“Ah, you know it, Eben Megg! It’s quite true.”