"Bless and save my wooden leg!" he exclaimed, when his tongue was found--"it is unbelievable. How do you know it?"
"I know it, and that's enough," replied Mr. Kyne, too much annoyed to stand upon politeness, or to explain that his boasted knowledge was assumed; not proved. "But, here's the devil of the thing," he continued--"how did the smugglers know I was off the watch those two particular nights? If it got wind the first night that I should be engaged at the Red Court--though I don't believe it did, for I can keep my own counsel, and did then--it could not have got wind the second. Five minutes before I went there last night, I had no notion whatever of going. Mr. Isaac looked into my rooms just before six, and would walk me off with him. I had had my chop at one o'clock, and was going to think about tea. Now how could the wretches have known last night that I was not on duty?"
"It's no good appealing to me, how," returned the captain. "I never was 'cute at breaking up marvels. Once, in the Pacific, there was a great big thing haunted the ship, bigger than the biggest sea-serpent, and--"
"Depend upon it we have traitors in the camp," unceremoniously interrupted the supervisor; for he knew by experience that when once Captain Copp was fairly launched upon that old marvel of the Pacific ocean, there was no stopping him. "Traitors round about us, at our very elbows and hearths, if we only knew in which direction to look for them."
"Well, I am not one," said the captain, "so you need not look after me. A pretty figure my wooden standard would cut, running smuggled goods! Why didn't you tell all this to Justice Thornycroft? He's the proper person. He's a magistrate."
"I know he is. But if I introduce a word about smugglers he throws cold water on it directly, and ridicules all I say. Once he quite rose up against me, all his bristles on end, in defence of the poor fishermen. Upon that, I hinted that I was not alluding to poor fishermen, but to people and transactions of far greater importance. It stirred up his anger beyond everything; he was barely civil, and turned away telling me to find the people and catch 'em, if I could find 'em; but not to apply to him."
"Well, that's reasonable," said Captain Copp. "Why don't you find 'em?"
"Because I can't find 'em," deplored the miserable officer. "There's the aggravation. I don't know in what quarter to look for them. The thing is like magic; it's altogether shrouded in mystery. I don't choose to speak of it publicly, or I might defeat the chance of discovery; the only time I did speak of it, was to Mr. Hunter, and got sympathy and aid offered and returned to me. You see what has come of that."
It was only too evident what he thought had come of it. And perhaps he was not far wrong. But for that recent morning's unlucky conversation between him and Robert Hunter, no dead man might have been lying on the Half-moon beach, with Isaac Thornycroft's handkerchief covering his face.
"Yes, that's the difficulty--where to look for them," resumed the mortified supervisor. "I cannot suspect any of the superior people in the neighbourhood. It's true I do not know much of those Connaughts. But they don't seem like smugglers either."