Bruton turned his squint eye upon his companion. He scarcely knew what to think of him. 'Where's your gang?' said he.
'I have men fit to board and capture a line-of-battle ship,' was the answer.
Bruton pointed dumbly ahead with his whip; and Jackman saw a little cottage upon the horizon, the most melancholy picture in the world under the grey sky, and set to the music of the wind that was now coming a little wildly off that opening eye of sea on their left. They drove rapidly, and drew up at the cottage door. It was a strong house, fit for a powder-magazine, built of Cornish flag, put together with a heedlessness of aspect that lent it beauty of the roughest sort.
It had several little windows on either side, a fair piece of ground plotted out at the back, a small front garden, and was certainly a dead broke bargain with its stairs, even for moral living, at the money asked.
Bruton made his horse fast, pulled out a key, and they entered his singular, very much detached house. It was dusty and grimy, and showed a great plenty of beer stains, and rum stains, and perhaps blood stains. It was naked to the windows of furniture. It stood waiting for the hurricanes of that iron coast to beat it down and lay its spirit to soil.
'This will do,' said Jackman, after looking over the house. 'Show me your stairs, Mr. Bruton.'
But first Mr. Bruton exposed a number of secret hiding-places in the house itself, the sight of which greatly delighted Captain Jackman. They were perfect, he thought, as places of concealment. They next went to the stairs. These were entered from without. They had no trap or cover.
'What's the good of a hatch?' said Mr. Bruton, descending.
The sea-flash in the base gave them light, and the light behind followed them. Mr. Bruton pointed to one or two avenues in which he said Captain Jackman and his hearties would find hiding-places—none more perfect along the coast, all open now, and so discoverable, being no longer needed. They stood on a step clear of the massive belch of the breaker.