ilded
truck and weather-vane with a tail of scarlet bunting. So closely
the fog hung about her that for a second I took her to be a cutter;
and then a second sail crept through the curtain, and I recognized
her for the _Gauntlet_ ketch, Port of Falmouth, Captain Jo Pomery,
returned from six months' foreign. I announced her to Billy with a
shout.

"As if a man couldn' tell that!" answered Billy, removing his cap and
rubbing the back of his head. "What brings her in here, that's what
I'm askin'."

"Belike," said I, scrambling over the gunwale, "the man has lost his
bearings in this fog, and mistakes Helford for Falmouth entrance."

"Lost his bearin's! Jo Pomery lost his bearin's!" Billy regarded me
between pity and reproach. "And him sailing her in from Blackhead
close round the Manacles, in half a capful o' wind an' the tides
lookin' fifty ways for Sunday! That's what he've a-done, for the
weather lifted while we was hauling trammel--anyways east of south a
man could see clear for three mile and more, an' not a vessel in
sight there. There's maybe three men in the world besides Jo Pomery
could ha' done it--the Lord knows how, unless 'tis by sense o' smell.
And he've a-lost his bearin's, says you!"

"Well then," I ventured, "perhaps he has a fancy to land part of his
cargo duty-free."

"That's likelier," Billy assented. "I don't say 'tis the truth, mind
you: for if 'tis truth, why should the man choose to fetch land by
daylight? Fog? A man like Jo Pomery isn' one to mistake a little
pride-o'-the-mornin' for proper thick weather--the more by token it's
been liftin' this hour and more. But 'tis a likelier guess anyway,
the _Gauntlet_ being from foreign. 'Lost his bearin's,' says you,
and come, as you might say, slap through the Manacles; an' by
accident, as you might say! Luck has a broad back, my son, but be
careful how you dance 'pon it."

"Where does she come from?" I asked.

"Mediterranean; that's all I know. Four months and more she must ha'
took on this trip. Iss; sailed out o' Falmouth back-along in the
tail-end o' February, and her cargo muskets and other combustibles."

"Muskets?"

"Muskets; and you may leave askin' me who wants muskets out there,
for in the first place I don't know, an' a still tongue makes a wise
head."

I had slipped on shirt and breeches. "We'll give him a hail,
anyway," said I, "and if there's sport on hand he may happen to let
us join it."

The ketch by this