"All our chickens are game-cocks now-a-days!" returned the elder one, half laughing: "but, Springall, could you swear that the Skipper and Robin Hays didn't concert it all together?"
"Let me alone, Jack, and don't put my back up. I'll lay my life, if there was any concerting in it, 'twas between Robin and the maid Barbara. Well, girls have queer fancies!—Who'd ha' thought she'd ha' fancied [Robin?]—though he's a brave sound-hearted little fellow; yet who'd ha' thought she'd have preferred him to—to——"
"To you, I suppose. Lord, Springall, there's no coming up to the women. Bless ye, I've seen those who loved apes, and parrots, and puppy-dogs, and took more pride and pleasure in them than in their own lawful husbands and born children! What d'ye think o' that? Why, would you believe it? a girl I loved better than my heart's blood took a fancy to an old man, and sent me adrift, though I was a likely fellow then—ah! different, very different to what I am now;" and Jack Roupall, leaning his elbows on his knees, that were wide apart, commenced drawing, with the butt end of his pistol, figures on the sand, which the wind, whether in anger or sportiveness, had flung upon the crag. After a lengthened pause, he looked suddenly up at the youth Springall, who still sat opposite to him, and said abruptly, "Are you sure you made no mistake?"
"Am I sure of the sight of my eyes, or the hearing of my ears?" returned the lad. "I was as close to the troopers as I am to you, though they saw me not, and their entire talk was of the Gull's Nest, and how they were all to be down here soon after sunrise; and a deal of jokes, in their own way, they passed upon it—stiff dry jokes, that were as hard to swallow as a poker."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the smuggler; "how they will pray when they see the crag dancing in the air! It would be ill done towards the secret stations of our friends on other parts of the coast, to let these fellows find the ins and outs of such a place as this; it would be holding a candle to the devil—giving them a guide to lead them on through all their plans henceforward and for ever. The Gull's Nest shall go after the Fire-fly. It gives me joy to mar their sport—their peeping and prying. But we will not let off the train until we see them pretty close upon us. The Roundhead rascals shall have the full benefit of our gay bonfire. 'Ods rot it! what else could we do, but make a gay ending of it at once. A gay ending!" he repeated—"a gay ending! No rock to mark the spot of so much merriment, so much joviality, so much spoil! Ah! in a hundred years, few can tell where the watchers of the Gull's Nest Crag lighted beacon and brand for the free rovers of the free sea!"
Another pause succeeded the rhapsody of Jack Roupall and then Springall inquired how it was that he could not open the strong room where the preacher had been left to his prayers.
"How it was? why, because I had not the key. And I am sure there's nothing in it. I was in with the skipper after the long-legged puritan was out, and I could see only squashed fruit, broken boxes, and old good-for-nothing rags. Whatever had been worth moving was moved; but that room will mount as high as any of them, I warrant me. I laid a good lot of combustibles to the door. Ah! there was the gleam of a spear, to my thinking." And he arose as he spoke, groaning out a curse against Springall the moment after. "My back—a murrain upon you and upon me too!—aches like the rheumatism from the weight of that old hag's coffin, which you would have me carry from the Gull's Nest out yonder, for fear it should be blown up with the crag. What did it signify if it was, I wonder?"
"You wouldn't like the body of your own mother to go heavenward after such a fashion, sinner as ye are, would ye, Jack?"
"They are coming," observed the rover, without heeding Springall's words, "they are coming."
It was a fine sight to see even a small number of such well-disciplined soldiers winding their way under the shadow of the hill nearest the scene of so many adventures.