Spencer Vane was a thoroughly experienced detective. He was no tyro at the business, and he was up to all the tricks and devices of the modern science of criminal detection. He was as good at the art of disguise as any in the profession, and it was his skill in the latter particular which make him so indifferent as to the approach of the gang of madly drunken smugglers.
Our hero walked over behind a high sand drift, and in a few minutes had worked a most startling and extraordinary "transform;" no living man, unless posted as to his disguise, could ever have recognised in the dark-faced, rough-looking man who issued from behind the drift, the same light-haired, dashing-looking fellow who had a moment before disappeared behind it.
CHAPTER X.
The detective had just completed his change in appearance, when he was startled by hearing a shrill piercing scream in a female voice from the direction of Tom Pearce's cabin.
"As I feared!" he muttered, and he walked rapidly toward the cabin, and approaching, he saw an excited group of men standing outside, while something of a more ordinary character appeared to be transpiring beneath the humble roof.
The detective approached the group of men standing outside and inquired:
"Hello, what's going on here?"
The men crowded around the new-comer, and glared in his face, and one of the men called out,
"Ahoy there, bring a glim here, quick! Here's stranger, and by all that's fatal, I believe Tom's enemy!"
The detective was perfectly cool as he answered;