"The jug? No. Just pour out the rest of the apple-jack, over the side."
"Make the fish drunk."
"Well, it sha'n't bother anybody else if I can help it."
"Then, if it's good for water-soaked people, it wont hurt the fish."
"Empty it, Dab, and come on. The doctor wasn't so far wrong, and I was glad to have it with me; but medicine's medicine, and I only wish people'd remember it."
The condemned liquor was already gurgling from the mouth of the jug into the salt water, and neither fish nor eel came forward to get a share of it. When the cork was replaced, the demijohn was set down again in the "cabin," with no more danger in it for anybody.
Perhaps that was one reason—that and his weariness—why Ham Morris did not take the pains even to lock it up.
Dabney was so tired in mind if not in body, that he postponed until the morrow anything he may have had to say about the tramp. He was not at all sure whether the latter had recognized him, and at all events the matter would have to wait. So it came to pass that all the village and the shore was deserted and silent, an hour or so later, when a stoutly built "cat-boat" with her one sail lowered, was quietly sculled up the inlet. There were two men on board,—a tall one and a short one,—and they ran their boat right alongside the "Swallow," as if that were the very thing they had come to do.
"Burgin," remarked the tall man, "what ef we don't find anything arter all this sailin' and rowin'? Most likely he's kerried it to the house. In course he has."
The keenly watchful eyes of Burgin had followed the fortunes of that apple-jack from first to last. To tell the truth, he had more than half tried to work himself in as one of the "sufferers," but with no manner of success. He had not failed, however, to see the coveted treasure stowed away, at last, under the half-deck of the "Swallow." That had been all the inducement required to get Peter and his boat across the bay, and the old "wrecker" was as anxious about the result as the tramp himself could be. It was hard to say which of them was first on board the "Swallow."