“Right! Ah, but it’s yourself that’s your father’s son, me lad.”
They crept softly down the pier; at one side was a huge fisherman’s net hung upon a frame to dry; they placed this between themselves and the seamen from the schooner so that they might not detect any movement in the shadow. As they drew nearer they could hear the sailors’ voices.
“A quiet night, mate,” said one.
“Yes,” answered the other, “quiet enough. But I’d rather spend it in my hammock than watching the lights on the water.”
“I wonder what it is that this government fellow Danvers is up to.”
“I don’t know. I don’t even think the skipper knows.”
“He must be well thought of at the admiralty, shipmate, to have a schooner placed at his service like this.”
“Ay! You’re right there. But it’s government work he’s on; those two prisoners he took on St. Mary’s Isle seem mighty important to him.”
“Did you hear where he took ’em? Up to old Meg Rawlins’. She’s the widow of old Rawlins the smuggler; Ben Kaye was in the party that went there; he said the boy and the Irishman were locked in cells in the underground vault where Rawlins used to hide his ‘run’ goods.”
“I wonder why he didn’t take ’em to a reg’lar government prison?”