ush of hushing murmurs out of sight. And now
and then the heavy vault was echoing with some sailor's song.

There was only one more bale to land, and that the most precious of
the whole, being all pure lace most closely packed in a water-proof
inclosure. Robin Lyth himself was ready to indulge in a careless song.
For this, as he had promised Mary, was to be his last illegal act.
Henceforth, instead of defrauding the revenue, he would most loyally
cheat the public, as every reputable tradesman must. How could any man
serve his time more notably, toward shop-keeping, and pave fairer way
into the corporation of a grandly corrupt old English town, than by long
graduation of free trade? And Robin was yet too young and careless to
know that he could not endure dull work. "How pleasant, how comfortable,
how secure," he was saying to himself, "it will be! I shall hardly be
able to believe that I ever lived in hardship."

But the great laws of human nature were not to be balked so. Robin Lyth,
the prince of smugglers, and the type of hardihood, was never to wear a
grocer's apron, was never to be "licensed to sell tea, coffee, tobacco,
pepper, and snuff." For while he indulged in this vain dream, and was
lifting his last most precious bale, a surge of neither wind nor tide,
but of hostile invasion, washed the rocks, and broke beneath his feet.

In a moment all his wits returned, all his plenitude of resource,
and unequalled vigor and coolness. With his left hand--for he was
as ambidexter as a brave writer of this age requires--he caught up a
handspike, and hurled it so truly along the line of torches that only
two were left to blink; with his right he flung the last bale upon the
shelf; then leaped out after it, and hurried it away. Then he sprang
into the boat again, and held an oar in either hand.

"In the name of the king, surrender," shouted Carroway, standing, tall
and grim, in the bow of the pinnace, which he had skillfully driven
through the entrance, leaving the other boats outside. "We are three to
one, we have muskets, and a cannon. In the name of the king, surrender."

"In the name of the devil, splash!" cried Robin, suiting the action
to the word, striking the water with both broad blades, while his men
snatched oars and did the same. A whirl of flashing water filled the
cave, as if with a tempest, soaked poor Carroway, and drenched his
sword, and deluged the priming of the hostile guns. All was uproar,
turmoil, a