"No, sir. Makes me feel a bit asthmatic-like, and if them duniers get a sight of me they'll reckon I've visited the Continent to make a show of myself," he exclaimed, with a low, deep-sea laugh, whilst he spread his hands upon his breast, around which, under cover of a large, loose, long pea-coat, he had coiled a length of rope-ladder with two iron hooks at one end of it, which made a hump under either shoulder-blade. There was no other way, however, of conveying the ladder ashore. In the hand it would instantly have challenged attention, and a bag would have been equally an object of curiosity to the two or three Custom-House phantoms flitting about in triangular-shaped trousers and shako-like headgear.
"There goes midnight, sir!" cried Caudel.
As I listened to the chimes a sudden fit of excitement set me trembling.
"Are ye there, Job?" called my captain.
"Ay, sir," responded a voice from the bows of the yacht.
"Jim?"
"Here, sir," answered a second voice out of the darkness forward.
"Dick?"
"Here, sir."
"Bobby?"