a snatch at the
bait, and before the sailor could catch it, away went the end astern,
when the man at the helm made a dash at it just as the slight cord was
running over the side.

Billy Waters made a dash at it just at the same moment, and there was a
dull thud as the two men's heads came in contact, and they fell back
into a sitting position on the deck, while the mackerel darted
frightened away to puzzle the whole shoal of its fellows with the novel
appendage hanging to its snout.

"Avast there, you lubber!" exclaimed Billy Waters angrily. "Stand by,
my lad, stand by," replied the other, making a dart back at the helm
just as the cutter was beginning to fall off.

"Look ye here, messmet, air you agoin' to make my head shipshape, or air
you not?" growled Tom Tully; and then, before his hairdresser could
finish tying the last knot, the lieutenant came on deck.

For when Hilary Leigh ran below, it was to seize a long spyglass out of
the slings in the cabin bulkhead, and to give his commanding officer a
tremendous shake.

"Sail on the larboard bow, Mr Lipscombe, sir. I say, do wake up, sir;
I think it is something this time."

The officer in question, who was a hollow-cheeked man of about forty,
very sallow-looking, and far from prepossessing in his features, opened
his eye, but he did not attempt to rise from the bunker upon which he
was stretched.

"Leigh," he said, turning his eye round towards the little oval thick
glass window nearest to him, "You're a most painstaking young officer,
but you are always mare's-nesting. What is it now?"

"One of those three-masted luggers, sir--a Frenchman--a _chasse maree_,
laden deeply, and running for Shoreham."

"Let her run," said the lieutenant, closing his eye again; the other was
permanently closed, having been poked out in boarding a Frenchman some
years before, and with the extinction of that optic went the prospect of
the lieutenant's being made a post-captain, and he was put in command of
the _Kestrel_ when he grew well.

"But it _is_ something this time, sir, I'm sure."

"Leigh," said the lieutenant, yawning, "I was just in a delicious dream,
and thoroughly enjoying myself when you come down and bother me about
some confounded fishing-boat. There, be off. No: I'll come this time."

He yawned, and showed a set of very yellow teeth; and then, as if by an
effort, leaped up and preceded the young officer on deck.

"Let's have a look at her, Leigh," he sai