“It can’t be helped, my lads,” cried Joe; “better luck next time. In with all that light canvas. Be smart about it, stand by the square-sail halliards—lower away; hoist the foresail again; down with the helm, Bill, while we get a pull at the main-sheet. We must run into shoal water and sink the tubs. It will come to that, I see.”
As Joe said, there was no time to lose, for the revenue-cruiser was now a little more than a mile distant, looming large in the fast-increasing obscurity of night. There promised, however, to be too much light during the night for them to hope to elude the sharp and practised eyes of her lookouts. While the smuggler, with the wind nearly abeam, was running in for the land, her crew were busily employed in getting the tubs on deck, and slinging them in long lines together, with heavy weights attached, over the side, so as to be able, by cutting a single lanyard, to let them all sink at once. No sooner did they alter their course than their pursuer did the same. They had, at all events, gained the important advantage of escaping being overhauled in daylight. They now stood steadily on till they got within a quarter of a mile of the land, the revenue-cutter not having gained materially on them. By this time every tub was either on deck or over the side.
“Starboard the helm a little, Tom—steady now!” sung out Joe; “we’ll have the marks on directly; I can just make out Pucknose Knoll and Farleigh church steeple. Now mind, when I sing out cut, cut all of you.”
It was not without some difficulty that the points he mentioned could be distinguished, and none but eyes long accustomed to peer through darkness could have seen objects on the shore at all. His aim was to bring certain marks on the shore in two lines to bisect each other, at which point the tubs were to be sunk, thus enabling him to find them again at a future day.
“Starboard again a little, Tom—steady now—that will do—luff you may, luff—I have it. Cut now, my hearties, cut!” he exclaimed, and the next moment a heavy splash told that all the tubs slung outside had been cut away, and sunk to the bottom. “Stand by to heave the rest overboard,” he continued, and a minute afterwards, with fresh bearings, the remainder of the cargo was committed to the deep. “Now let’s haul up for Fairport, and get home to comfort our wives and sweethearts. Better luck next time.”
With this philosophical observation, Joe buttoned up his pea-jacket, and twisted his red comforter round his neck, determined to make himself comfortable, and to bear his loss like a man. By the “Pretty Polly’s” change of course she soon drew near the “Ranger,” when a shot from one of the guns of the latter came flying over her masthead. On this significant notice that the cruiser wished to speak to her, Joe, not being anxious for a repetition of the message, let fly his jib-sheet, and his cutter coming round on the other tack, he kept his foresail to windward and his helm down, thus remaining almost stationary. A boat soon pulled alongside with the mate of the cruiser, who, with his crew, each carrying a lantern, overhauled every part of the vessel’s hold, but not even a drop of brandy was to be found, nor a quid of tobacco.
“Sorry, sir, you’ve taken all this trouble,” said Joe, touching his hat to the officer. “I thought, sir, you know’d we was a temp’rance vessel.”
It was diamond cut diamond. The officer looked at Joe, and burst out laughing, though disappointed at not making a seizure.
“Tell that to the marines, Mister Buntin,” he answered. “If you hadn’t, half an hour ago, enough spirits on board to make the whole ship’s company of a line-of-battle ship as drunk as fiddlers, I’m a Dutchman.”
“I can’t help, sir, what you thinks,” replied Joe, humbly; “but I suppose you won’t detain us? We wants to get to Fairport to-night, to drink tea with our wives and nurse our babies.”