“No, that it ain’t, my friend,” said Coleman, rising and patting his foe on the back. “I can’t tell ye how pleased I am to meet with ye. You’re gettin’ stouter, I think. Smugglin’ seems to agree with ye!—hey?”
He said this with a leer, and Bax laughed as he inspected Long Orrick more narrowly.
The fact was that the smuggler’s clothing was so stuffed in all parts with tobacco that his lanky proportions had quite disappeared, and he had become so ludicrously rotund as to be visibly altered even in a dark night!
“Well, it does agree with me, that’s a fact,” said Long Orrick, with a savage laugh; in the tone of which there was mingled however, quite as much bitterness as merriment.
Just at this moment the rest of Coleman’s friends, including Tommy Bogey and Peekins, appeared on the scene in breathless haste, having been attracted by the pistol-shot.
In the eager question and answer that followed, Long Orrick was for a moment not sufficiently guarded. He wrenched himself suddenly from the loosened grasp of Bax, and, darting between several of the party, one of whom he floored in passing with a left-handed blow, he ran along the shore at the top of his speed!
Bax, blazing with disappointment and indignation, set off in fierce pursuit, and old Coleman, bursting with anger, followed as fast as his short legs and shorter wind would permit him. Guy Foster and several of the others joined in the chase, while those who remained behind contented themselves with securing the men who had been already captured.