“You are not the only one that caught good luck at the last minute,” he was saying.
“Who else has got a share of it?” asked the other.
“I have. An hour after you’d told me that you’d got a couple of passengers for Portsmouth, a man came along and engaged my vessel for a run along the coast.”
“What’s he going to do with her?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going along; so I’ll be sure that all’s right.”
“Money’s tight in these days of war,” remarked the skipper of the schooner, “but,” with a shake of the head, “my boat only goes out with reg’lar cargoes and on reg’lar business. I don’t like these queer cruises. I’ve seen strange things happen on ’em.”
The captain of the shallop nodded his head and answered, soberly enough:
“You’re right, cap’en; but I don’t have no reg’lar cargoes, and fishing don’t pay any more, with British privateers always poking their noses into the lower bay. A man must support his family, you know.”
Ethan Carlyle and Longsword stood in the waist, leaning against the schooner’s rail and listening to this conversation. When the skipper of the shallop crossed the pier and climbed into his own vessel, Ethan said:
“Somehow or other I don’t like that.”