ed, and they were all drowned, and that the
surf piled the boat over with sea-weed. Depend on it they did not land."

"Depend on it they did, sir; those men are safe and well, and ready for
any mischief. Hawker was on the look-out for them, and they all stowed
away till the police cleared off, which they did last week. There will
be mischief soon. There; I have told you enough to cut my throat, and
I'll tell you more, and convince you that I am right. That shepherd at
whose hut we stayed last night was one of them; that fellow was the
celebrated Captain Mike. What do you think of that?"

I shuddered as I heard the name of that fell ruffian, and thought that
I had slept in the hut with him. But when I remembered how he was
whispering with the stranger in the middle of the night, I came to the
conclusion that serious mischief was brewing, and pushed on through the
fog, which still continued as dense as ever, and, guided by some
directions from the old hut-keeper, I got to Captain Brentwood's about
ten o'clock, and told him and the Major the night's adventures.

We three armed ourselves secretly and quietly, and went back to the hut
with the determination of getting possession of the person of the
shepherd Mike, who, were he the man Dick accused him of being, would
have been a prize indeed, being one of the leading Van Diemen's Land
rangers, and one of the men reported as missing by Captain Blockstrop.

"Suppose," said Captain Brentwood, "that we seize the fellow, and it
isn't him after all?"

"Then," said the Major, "an action for false imprisonment would lie
sir, decidedly. But we will chance it."

And when we got there, we saw the old hut-keeper, he of the colliery
explosion experiences, shepherding the sheep himself, and found that
the man we were in search of had left the hut that morning, apparently
to take the sheep out. But that going out about eleven the old man had
found them still in the yard, whereby he concluded that the shepherd
was gone, which proved to be the case. And making further inquiries we
found that the shepherd had only been hired a month previously, and no
man knew whence he came: all of which seemed to confirm Dick's story
wonderfully, and made us excessively uneasy. And in the end the Major
asked me to prolong my visit for a time and keep my servant with me, as
every hand was of use; and so it fell out that I happened to be present
at, and chronicle all which follows.

Chapter XXXVI