No talking! When you've got the kegs in the cellar at Angel Point, good!
But now--come, my comrades, I am your captain!"

She was making the thing a cheerful adventure, and the men now swung
the kegs on their shoulders and carried them to the boat. In another
half-hour they were under way in the gaudy light of an orange sunrise, a
simmering wind from the sea lifting them up the river, and the grey-red
coast of Labrador shrinking sullenly back.

About this time, also, a Government cutter was putting out from under
the mountain-wall at Quebec, its officer in command having got renewed
orders from the Minister to bring in Tarboe the smuggler. And when Mr.
Martin, the inspector in command of the expedition, was ordered to take
with him Mr. Orvay Lafarge and five men, "effectively armed," it was
supposed by the romantic Minister that the matter was as good as done.

What Mr. Orvay Lafarge did when he got the word, was to go straight to
his hat-peg, then leave the office, walk to the little club where he
spent leisure hours, called office hours by people who wished to be
precise as well as suggestive,--sit down, and raise a glass to his lips.
After which he threw himself back in his chair and said: "Well, I'm
particularly damned!" A few hours later they were away on their doubtful
exploit.

II. THE DEFENCE

On the afternoon of the second day after she left Labrador, the
Ninety-Nine came rippling near Isle of Fires, not sixty miles from her
destination, catching a fair wind on her quarter off the land. Tarboe
was in fine spirits, Joan was as full of songs as a canary, and
Bissonnette was as busy watching her as in keeping the nose of the
Ninety-Nine pointing for Cap de Gloire. Tarboe was giving the sail full
to the wind, and thinking how he would just be able to reach Angel Point
and get his treasure housed before mass in the morning.

Mass! How many times had he laughed as he sat in church and heard the
cure have his gentle fling at smuggling! To think that the hiding-place
for his liquor was the unused, almost unknown, cellar of that very
church, built a hundred years before as a refuge from the Indians, which
he had reached by digging a tunnel from the shore to its secret passage!
That was why the customs officers never found anything at Angel Point,
and that was why Tarboe much loved going to mass. He sometimes thought
he could catch the flavour of the brands as he leaned his forehead
on the seat before him. But t