Dick's journeys to and fro between Polkerran and St. Ives extended over ten days. His absences greatly puzzled Sam, but Dick gave no explanation until he felt that he had learned enough to make a start, and decided to visit the boat-builder's no more. He was not so foolish as to suppose that he had mastered the trade, but believed he knew enough to enable him to construct a boat that would serve his simple purpose. Then one morning he set Sam to collect a number of sound planks from the floors and wainscoting in the unused rooms at the Towers, and having borrowed from Petherick the tools necessary to supplement those that Reuben had, he began his task.
Day by day for a fortnight the lads worked steadily, using the dilapidated stables for their workshop. Occasionally the Squire and Reuben stood by and criticised; old Penwarden, too, looked in and offered a more or less impracticable suggestion. Once when Dick was at a loss how to proceed, he trudged to St. Ives to consult the foreman.
"What, Maister, has she sunk a'ready?" said the man with twinkling eyes, as Dick entered.
He obtained the information he desired, and within a few days afterwards the boat was finished. Nobody at the Towers, except her makers, believed that she would float. How to get her down to the water was at first a baffling problem. She was too heavy and cumbersome to be carried down the cliff-path by the boys, and they would not seek assistance from the villagers. It was Mr. Carlyon that solved the difficulty. He suggested that the boat should be conveyed on a farmer's wagon to a dell about four miles northward, where a stream flowed into the sea. This was done early one morning, the farmer, a friend of the Vicar's, being bound to secrecy. They launched the boat on the stream, and Sam gave a whoop of delight on seeing that she rode fairly upright. With a couple of spare sculls from their nook on the Beal, they pulled her out to sea, and Dick was pardonably proud of his handiwork when she proved quite seaworthy, if somewhat lumbering.
"She's not very pretty, but she's strong," he said to Sam, "and that is all we need trouble about."
During the weeks in which Dick had been thus occupied, no further annoyance was suffered from the villagers. Sir Bevil's warning had apparently taken effect. Penwarden reported that two more serious checks had been given to the smugglers. Once they had been interrupted in the act of running a cargo at Lunnan Cove, some miles to the south, and a hundred tubs had been seized by Mr. Mildmay. A few days later, the cutter had gone in chase of a lugger in a stiff gale, and the seamanship of the smugglers being at least equal to that of the King's men, the quarry had escaped. But her crew, not daring to run the cargo while the revenue officers were on the alert, had sunk the tubs, which were always carried ready slung to meet such an emergency, in five fathoms of water beyond St. Cuby's Cove. In their hurry, however, the work was not done so carefully as usual, with the result that one of the tubs was chafed off the sinking rope, drifted about, and next morning was descried by Penwarden from the cliff. He informed Mr. Mildmay. The shallow water along the shore was systematically searched, and the whole cargo was hooked up by means of "creeps," as the grapnels were called. Rumour, reaching the Towers by way of the Parsonage, said that on both these occasions Tonkin was the freighter, so that his loss by the successive failures was probably not far short of £300.
Tidings came, also, by the local carrier, of renewed activity on the part of the Aimable Vertu in the Channel. A revenue cruiser had fought an action with her off the Lizard, and was worsted, her commander being wounded, and the vessel only escaping by running in shore to shallow water, where the privateer could not follow. The authorities, already deeply incensed by the escape of Delarousse from Plymouth, were furious at this recurrence of his depredations, and had offered a high price for information of his movements, and a still higher reward to any officer who should capture him.
For a few days Dick laid up his new boat, when fishing was done, in the mouth of the little stream on which he had launched it, tramping back with Sam over the four miles to the Towers. But this became irksome, and he tried to think of some means of keeping the craft nearer home without running the risk of its destruction by the smugglers. After a good deal of anxious consideration he hit upon the idea of building a shed for it on the beach at the foot of the cliff.
"Jown me if I see the good o' 't," said Sam, when Dick explained his plan. "They'll break into the shed, or fire it, if they want to, and we'll lose our boat and our labour too."
"But I've thought of a way of preventing that, Sam. They won't interfere with it in daylight: 'tis only the night we need fear. Well, we'll make 'em give us warning of any trick they play."