“Yes, uncle; two vessels came along into Rockabie, but I only got a glimpse of them.”
“Too late, eh? Well, why not run over in the boat? I want something done in the town.”
“Do you, uncle? Oh!” cried the boy, half wild with excitement, as he turned and rushed to the little mirror over the chimney-piece to glance in.
“Yes,” said the old man, smiling. “There, nothing shows now except that little darkness under your eyes. I’m quite run out of paper, my boy. Go and get me some. But—er—no fighting this time.”
“No, uncle,” cried the lad, flushing up; and then, quickly: “There’s a beautiful soft breeze, dead on to the land, and it will serve going and coming.”
“Off with you, then, while it holds. Paper the same as before. Get back in good time.”
Aleck wanted no further incitement. The “wigging,” as he termed it, that was to be given to Dunning would keep, and he avoided the man as he hurried down into the gorge, stepped the mast and hooked on the rudder, guided the little vessel along the narrow, zigzag, canal-like harbour, and without an eye this time for the birds or beauty of the scene, he was soon after lying back steering and holding the sheet, while the well-filled sail tugged impatiently as if resenting being restrained.
Aleck had fully determined to avoid the boys of Rockabie that morning, and he was half disposed to hug himself with the idea that after the thrashing Big Jem had received they would interfere with him no more. But he was quite wrong, for the port boys were too full of vitality, and always on the look-out for some means of getting rid of the effervescing mischief that bubbled and foamed within them.
The distant sight of the King’s vessels heading for the port was quite enough to attract them to the pier, and there they were in force, well on the look-out for something to annoy so as to give themselves employment till the sloop and cutter came in.
There was the something all ready in the person of Tom Bodger, who was seated upon a ship’s fender, one of those Brobdingnagian netted balls covered with a network of tarred rope, used to keep the edge of the stone pier from crushing and splintering the sides of the vessel.