a deep sigh and slapped me heavily on the shoulder.

"All serene, my buck," he said; "now let's see after you. I've half an
hour. What's the ship?"

I was at a loss, but Carlos said out of the darkness, "The ship the
_Thames_. My friend Senor Ortiz, of the Minories, said you would know."

"Oh, I know, I know," Rangsley said softly; and, indeed, he did know
all that was to be known about smuggling out of the southern counties of
people who could no longer inhabit them. The trade was a survival of the
days of Jacobite plots. "And it's a hanging job, too. But it's no affair
of mine." He stopped and reflected for an instant.

I could feel Carlos' eyes upon us, looking out of the thick darkness. A
slight rustling came from the corner that hid Castro.

"She passes down channel to-night, then?" Rangsley said. "With this wind
you'll want to be well out in the Bay at a quarter after eleven."

An abnormal scuffling, intermingled with snatches of jovial
remonstrance, made itself heard from the bottom of the ladder. A voice
called up through the hatch, "Here's your uncle, Squahre Jack," and a
husky murmur corroborated.

"Be you drunk again, you old sinner?" Rangsley asked. "Listen to me....
Here's three men to be set aboard the _Thames_ at a quarter after
eleven."

A grunt came in reply.

Rangsley repeated slowly.

The grunt answered again.

"Here's three men to be set aboard the _Thames_ at a quarter after
eleven. . . ." Rangsley said again.

"Here's... a-cop... three men to be set aboard _Thames_ at quarter after
eleven," a voice hiccoughed back to us.

"Well, see you do it," Rangsley said. "He's as drunk as a king,"
he commented to us; "but when you've said a thing three times, he
remembers--hark to him."

The drunken voice from below kept up a constant babble of, "Three men to
be set aboard _Thames_... three men to be set . . ."

"He'll not stop saying that till he has you safe aboard," Rangsley
said. He showed a glimmer of light down the ladder--Carlos and Castro
descended. I caught sight below me of the silver head and the deep
red ears of the drunken uncle of Rangsley. He had been one of the most
redoubtable of the family, a man of immense strength and cunning, but a
confirmed habit of consuming a pint and a half of gin a night had made
him disinclined for the more arduous tasks of the trade. He limited his
energies to working the underground passage, to the success of which his
fox-like cunning, and intim