-Martin Point. There was a sail about ten miles to the
east-nor'-east at sundown. She might have been a Bristol schooner, or
she might have been a King's fly-boat.'

'A King's crawl-boat,' said Captain Murgatroyd, with a sneer. 'We cannot
hang the gauger until Venables brings up the _Fairy Queen_, for after
all it was one of his hands that was snackled. Let him do his own dirty
work.'

'Tausend Blitzen!' cried the ruffian Dutchman, 'would it not be a kindly
grass to Captain Venables to chuck the gauger down the Black Drop ere he
come? He may have such another job to do for us some day.'

'Zounds, man, are you in command or am I?' said the leader angrily.
'Bring the prisoner forward to the fire! Now, hark ye, dog of a
land-shark; you are as surely a dead man as though you were laid out
with the tapers burning. See here'--he lifted a torch, and showed by
its red light a great crack in the floor across the far end of the
cave--'you can judge of the Black Drop's depth!' he said, raising an
empty keg and tossing it over into the yawning gulf. For ten seconds
we stood silent before a dull distant clatter told that it had at last
reached the bottom.

'It will carry him half-way to hell before the breath leaves him,' said
one.

'It's an easier death than the Devizes gallows!' cried a second.

'Nay, he shall have the gallows first!' a third shouted. 'It is but his
burial that we are arranging.'

'He hath not opened his mouth since we took him,' said the man who was
called Dicon. 'Is he a mute, then? Find your tongue, my fine fellow, and
let us hear what your name is. It would have been well for you if you
had been born dumb, so that you could not have sworn our comrade's life
away.'

'I have been waiting for a civil question after all this brawling and
brabbling,' said I. 'My name is Micah Clarke. Now, pray inform me who ye
may be, and by what warrant ye stop peaceful travellers upon the public
highway?'

'This is our warrant,' Murgatroyd answered, touching the hilt of his
cutlass. 'As to who we are, ye know that well enough. Your name is
not Clarke, but Westhouse, or Waterhouse, and you are the same cursed
exciseman who snackled our poor comrade, Cooper Dick, and swore away his
life at Ilchester.'

'I swear that you are mistaken,' I replied. 'I have never in my life
been in these parts before.'

'Fine words! Fine words!' cried another smuggler. 'Gauger or no, you
must jump for it, since you know the secret of our