The worthy coast-guard-man scratched his nose and stared at the shingle for some minutes before venturing to reply.
“I think,” said he at length, “that we’ll cook his goose to-night; that’s wot it is.”
Coleman paused, and looked thoughtfully at Bluenose. The Captain nodded his head pleasantly, but said nothing, and Coleman proceeded:—
“He’ll come in with the flood-tide no doubt, if the gale don’t drive him in sooner, an’ run ashore as near to the cave as possible; but he’ll be scared away if he sees anything like unusual watchin’ on the shore, so you’d better get out o’ sight as fast as ye can, and keep there.”
“Don’t you think it would be as well that you also should keep out of sight, and so leave the coast clear for him?” suggested Bax.
“Not so,” said Coleman with a grin, “he’d see that I’d done it for an object. Long Orrick keeps his weather eye too wide open to be caught so easy as that comes to.”
“Well, but come up for half-an-hour, and have a glass of beer while we talk over the business,” said Bax.
Coleman shook his head, “Can’t quit my post; besides, I don’t drink no beer.”
“Brayvo! old feller,” cried Bluenose, “give us your flipper. Water, cold, for ever! say I, as the whale remarked to the porpoise. But let’s go under the lee o’ the boat-’ouse an’ talk it out, for we shan’t nab Long Orrick this night, if we doesn’t go at ’im like a cat at a mouse.”
“Just listen to that old codfish,” said Tommy Bogey to Peekins, “takin’ credit to his-self for not drinkin’, though he smokes like a steam-tug, an’ chews like—like—I’m a Dutchman if I know what, unless it be like the bo’sun of a seventy-four gun ship.”