hat old Van Dunck said. I wish he had
not said it."

"Ten tousan' tuyfels--as the stingy old thief himself says--he might
have held his infernal croak. I hate to make sail with a croak astern;
'tis as bad as a crow on forestay-sail."

"All very fine for you to talk," grumbled the man of the bilander to the
master of the ketch; "but the bad luck is saddled upon me this voyage.
You two get the gilgoes, and I the bilboes!"

"Brown, none of that!" Captain Lyth said, quietly, but with a look which
the other understood; "you are not such a fool as you pretend to be. You
may get a shot or two fired at you; but what is that to a Grimsby man?
And who will look at you when your hold is broached? Your game is the
easiest that any man can play--to hold your tongue and run away."

"Brown, you share the profits, don't you see?" the ketch man went on,
while the other looked glum; "and what risk do you take for it? Even if
they collar you, through your own clumsiness, what is there for them to
do? A Grimsby man is a grumbling man, I have heard ever since I was that
high. I'll change berths with you, if you choose, this minute."

"You could never do it," said the Grimsby man, with that high contempt
which abounds where he was born--"a boy like you! I should like to see
you try it."

"Remember, both of you," said Robin Lyth, "that you are not here to do
as you please, but to obey my orders. If the coast-guard quarrel, we do
not; and that is why we beat them. You will both do exactly as I have
laid it down; and the risk of failure falls on me. The plan is very
simple, and can not fail, if you will just try not to think for
yourselves, which always makes everything go wrong. The only thing you
have to think about at all is any sudden change of weather. If a gale
from the east sets in, you both run north, and I come after you. But
there will not be any easterly gale for the present week, to my belief;
although I am not quite sure of it."

"Not a sign of it. Wind will hold with sunset, up to next quarter of the
moon."

"The time I ha' been on the coast," said Brown, "and to hear the young
chaps talking over my head! Never you mind how I know, but I'll lay a
guinea with both of you--easterly gale afore Friday."

"Brown, you may be right," said Robin; "I have had some fear of it, and
I know that you carry a weather eye. No man under forty can pretend to
that. But if it will only hold off till Friday, we shall have the laugh
of it. A