“Do you know that there is a gang of smugglers around here, and that we see and talk to some of its members nearly every day?” asked Chase, abruptly.
“No,” replied Featherweight. “I knew there was such a band somewhere on the coast, for Walter was reading about it this morning in the paper; but I didn’t know that they were so near us.”
Featherweight remembered that Perk had given it as his decided opinion that, if the Sportsman’s Club and Bayard and his men had come to blows on the preceding day, the Club would have whipped three of the relations of the ringleader of the band; but he did not allude to it, for he was not in the habit of repeating what was said to him by his friends. It was this quality—the ability to hold his tongue, and a very rare one it is, too—that had made Featherweight so many friends. If any of the students at the Academy wanted a trustworthy confidant, they always selected him, for he was never known to tell a secret. More than that, they could say what they pleased before him about anything or anybody, so long as they did not abuse any of his friends, and there was no danger that it would ever be repeated.
“Well, they do live near us—right here in our very midst,” continued Chase; “and you are at this moment standing on board their vessel!”
“No!” exclaimed Featherweight.
“But I say, yes; you are. And now I will tell you how I came to find out about them.”
Chase settled himself into an easy position on the ladder, and proceeded to give his companion a history of everything that had happened to him since he had last seen the members of the Sportsman’s Club. He told how Bayard and his cousins had excited the suspicions of himself and Wilson by leaving them and going off together; how they had crept through the bushes and overheard their conversation about the smugglers, and the plans they had laid against Walter Gaylord; how Bayard, in order to get him and Wilson out of the way, had raised a quarrel with them and told them to go home; how they had waited until dark and then started for Mr. Gaylord’s house, intending to see Walter and put him on his guard against Coulte and his sons; how they had been waylaid at the gate by a couple of sailors, who proved to be Pierre and Edmund; and wound up giving an account of Bayard’s visit to the schooner that morning.
“From some things Bayard said when he was here,” added Chase, “I have come to the conclusion that they did not intend to capture me, but mistook me for Walter. You know I ride a white horse and dress something like him, and it is very easy for one to make a mistake in the dark. Bayard was astonished and very angry when he found me in the locker, and I heard him say to Coulte that it was none of his affair (alluding, I suppose, to my capture), and that he washed his hands of it.”
“Then why didn’t Coulte set you at liberty?” asked Featherweight.