asking questions all of a screech.  The first rocket had fetched her over hot-foot and agog, and the captain had to run out and stop her tongue, and send her home with Ann Geen.  But they didn’t go till the preacher had touched off every single rocket, stepping back as they went whoosh! whoosh! and waving his hat and crying, “God save the King!” “God save the King!” cried Captain John after him, and Bessie stood wondering if the end of the world had come, or the master had gone clean out of his wits.

The captain used to try and explain it afterwards when he told the story.  “You’ve seen a woman in hysterics,” he’d say, “and you know how a man feels when he wants to drop work and go on the drink for a week.  Well, ‘twasn’ exactly one or t’other with me, but a little like both.  I’m a level-headed tradesman, and known for such, but if ever that chap walks into my house again, I’ll be wise, and go straight out by the back door and put myself under restraint.”

After the women had gone, he took the fellow back to the kitchen, and sat putting questions to him in a reverent sort of voice, and eyeing him as awesome as Billy Bennett when he hooked the mermaid, until the poor creature talked himself sleepy, and asked to be shown to his room.  Captain Carter saw him to bed, came downstairs to the parlour again, and spread himself on the sofa for forty winks; for between the boat dodging out to sea and the pack-horses waiting ready up at Trenowl’s farm above the hill, there was no going to bed for him that night.

He had been sleeping maybe for two hours, when a whistle fetched him to his feet and out of the door like a scout.  ’Twas nothing more nor less than the boys’ arrival signal, and this was what had happened.

When the preacher’s first rocket went off, the collector, down on board the cutter, was taking his bit of supper in the cabin.  At the sound of it he rushed up the companion, and found all his crew on deck with their necks cricked back, barring one man, who that moment popped his head up through the fore-hatchway.  “What on earth was that?” he asked.  “A rocket, sir,” said the chief boatman; “just sent up from Prussia Cove.”  Mr. Wearne couldn’t find his breath for a moment; but when he did, ’twas to say, “Very well, John Carter.  I’ve a-got you this time, my dandy!  I don’t quite understand how you come to be such a fool.  But that rocket costs you a hundred pounds, and if I’m not mistaken I’ll have your cargo ’pon top of it.”

The breeze still blew pretty steady, and he gave orders to stand out into the bay, get an offing, and keep a sharp look-out as the moon rose.  He knew that all Carter’s ordinary craft, except the sean-boat, were quiet at anchor at Bessie’s Cove; but he reckoned that the boat had gone out this time to meet and unload a stranger.  He never dreamed she would be crossing all the way to Roscoff and back on her own account.  He knew, too, that Carter had a “spot” near Mousehole to fall back upon when a landing at Prussia Cove couldn’t be worked.  So he stood out to put the cutter on a line commanding both places, which, with the soldier’s wind then blowing, was easy enough; and as she pushed out her nose past Cuddan Point the whole sky began to bang with rockets.