"What!" cried Aleck. "That"s as good as saying that if I fish along here you"ll sink my boat."
"Didn"t say I would, but it"s like enough as some "un might shove a boat-hook through or drop in a good big boulder stone."
"Then I tell you what it is, Master Eben Megg. If any damage is done to my Seagull you"ll have to answer for it before the magistrate."
"Oh! that"s your game, is it, my lad? Now, lookye here, don"t you get threatening of me or you"ll get the worst on it. We folk at Eilygugg never interferes with you and the captain and never interferes about your ketching a bit o" fish or taking a few eggs so long as you are civil; but you"re on"y foreigners and intruders and don"t belong to these parts, and we do."
"Well, of all the impudence," cried Aleck, "when my uncle bought the whole of the Den estate right down to the sea! Don"t you know that you"re intruders and trespa.s.sers when you come laying your crab-pots under our cliff and shooting your seine on the sandy patch off the little harbour?"
"No, youngster, I don"t; but I do know as you"re getting a deal too sarcy, and that I"m going to stop it, and my mates too."
"Get out! Who are you?" cried the boy, indignantly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that if you want to fish off our sh.o.r.e and wants a man to help with your boat you"ve got to ask some of us to help, and not get bringing none o" your wooden-legged cripples spying and poking about our ground."
"Spy? What is there to spy?" said Aleck, giving the man a peculiar look.
"Never you mind about that. You be off home, and don"t you come spying about here with none of your gla.s.ses."
Aleck laughed derisively.
"Ah, you may grin, my lad; but I"ve been a-watching of yer this morning," said the man, fiercely. "You"ve been busy with that gla.s.s, prying and peering about, and I caught yer at it."
Aleck laughed again.
"Oh! that"s what you think, is it?" he said.
"Yes, and it"s what I says; so be off home."
"I shall do nothing of the kind, Eben," said the boy, hotly. "I"ve a better right here than you have, and I shall come whenever I please.
Spying, eh?"
"Ay, spying, youngster; and I won"t have it."
"Then it"s all true, eh?" said the boy, mockingly.
"What"s true?" snarled the man.
"You know. What have you got hidden away among the caverns--Hollands gin or French brandy? Perhaps it"s silk or velvet. No, no; I know.
But you can"t think that. How do you manage to land the great casks?"
"I dunno what you"re talking about, youngster--do you?"
"Thoroughly. But aren"t the tobacco casks too big and too heavy to haul up the cliffs?"
"Look here, young fellow," growled the man; "none o" your nonsense.
You"d better be off before you get hurt. That"s your way back."
"Is it?" said Aleck. "Then I"m not going back till I choose. I say, should you talk like this to one of the Revenue sloop"s men if he came ash.o.r.e?"
"Oh, we know how to talk to that sort if he comes our way," said the man, with a chuckling laugh; "and they knows it, too, and don"t come."
"Nor the press-gang either, eh?" said Aleck, mockingly.
Up to that moment the man"s fierce face had alone been seen, but at the word press-gang he gave a violent start and rose to his knees, upon which he hobbled close up to the edge of the shelf upon which he had perched himself.
"Oh, that"s it, is it, my lad, eh?" he growled, shaking his fist savagely. "Then, look here. If the press-gang--cuss "em!--ever does come along here we shall know who put "em up to it, and if they take any of our chaps--mind yer they won"t take all, and them behind"ll know what to do. I"m not going to threaten, but if someone wasn"t sunk in his boat, or had a bit o" rock come tumbling down on him when he was taking up his net under the cliffs, it would be strange to me. D"yer hear that?"
"Oh, yes, I hear that," retorted Aleck. "So you won"t threaten, eh?
What do you call that?"
"Never you mind what I call it, youngster; and what I says I means. So now you know."
"Yes," said Aleck, coolly; "now I know that what people say about you and your gang up at Eilygugg is quite true."
"What do people say?" shouted the man. "What people?"
"The Rockabie folk."
"And what do they say?"
"That you"re a set of smugglers, and, worse still, wreckers when you get a chance, and don"t stop at robbery or murder. One of the fishermen--I won"t say his name--said you were a regular gang of pirates."
"The Rockabie fishermen are a set o" soft-headed fools," snarled the man. "But what do I care for all they say? Let "em prove it; and, look here, if we"re as bad as that you folk up at the Den aren"t safe."
"Which means that you threaten the captain, my uncle," cried Aleck, defiantly.
"Are you going to tell him what I said?"
"Perhaps I am," said Aleck; "perhaps I"m not. I"m going to do just as I please all along this coast, for it"s free to everybody, and my uncle has ten times the rights here that you people at the fishermen"s cottages have. You"ve just been talking insolence to me, so let"s have no more of it. This comes of the captain, my uncle, being kind and charitable to you people time after time when someone has been ill."
The man growled out something in a muttering way.
"Ah, you know it, Eben Megg! It"s quite true."
"Who said it warn"t?" growled the man; "but if he"d done ten times as much I"m not going to have you spying and prying about here. What is it you want to know?"
"That"s my business," said Aleck, defiantly. "I say, you haven"t made a fortune out of smuggling, have you, and bought the estate?"
"You keep your tongue quiet, will yer?" growled the man, fiercely.
"What do you know about smuggling?"
"Just as much as you do, Eben Megg," cried the boy, laughing. "Just as much as everyone else does who lives here. Didn"t our old maid come in scared one night after a holiday and walking across from Rockabie and go into a fit because she had seen, as she said, a whole regiment of ghosts walking over the moor, leading ghostly horses, which came out of the sea fog and crossed the road without making a sound? Jane said they were the spirits of the old soldiers who were killed in the big fight and buried by the four stones on Black Hill, and that as soon as they were across the stony road they were all swallowed up in a mist. She keeps to it till now, and believes it."
"Well, why shouldn"t she?" growled the man. "She arn"t the first as has seen a ghost. Why shouldn"t she?"
"Because it"s so silly, when it was a party of smugglers leading their horses, with kegs slung across their backs and bales on pack saddles."
"Bah!" cried the man. "Horses loaded like that would clatter over the rough stones."