This puzzled him fairly, as Carter knew it would.  And it puzzled the Cove boys in the sean-boat as they lay on their oars about three miles from shore and discussed the first warning.  But in one of the flashes Captain Harry Carter, who was commanding, spied the cutter’s sails quite plain under the dark of the land, plain enough to see that she was running out free.  He knew that he couldn’t have been seen by her in the heave of the swell, for the sean-boat lay pretty low with her heavy cargo, and he’d given her a lick of grey paint at Roscoff by way of extra precaution.  So, thought he, “A signal’s a signal; but brother John doesn’t know what I know.  Let the cutter stand out as she’s going, and we’ll nip in round the tail of her.  She can’t follow into the Cove, with her draught, even if she spies us; and by daybreak we’ll have the best part of the cargo landed.”  And so he did, muffling oars and crossing over a mile to southward of the cutter, and after that way-all! and pull for the Cove.

The preacher at John Carter’s, and Mrs. Geen at Bessie Bussow’s, both woke early next morning.  But Mrs. Geen was first by a good hour, and what pulled the preacher out of bed was the sound of guns.  He put his head out of window, and could hardly believe it was the peaceful place he’d come upon last evening.  The beach swarmed with men like emmets.  Near up, by high-water mark, men were unloading a long-boat for dear life—­some passing kegs, others slinging them to horses, others running the horses up the cliff under his window.  At first he thought it must be their trampling had woke him out of sleep, but the next moment bang! the room shook all about him, a cloud of smoke drifted up towards him from the Enys Point, and through it, while ’twas clearing, he saw John Carter and another man run to the battery and begin to load again, with Mrs. Geen behind them waving a rammer, and dancing like a paper-woman in a cyclone.  Below the mouth of the Cove tossed a boatload of men, pulling and backing with their heads ducked, their faces on a level with their shoulders, and all turned back towards the battery, while a big red-faced man stood up in the stern-sheets shaking his fist and dancing almost as excitedly as Mrs. Geen.  Still farther out, a fine cutter lay rocking on the swell, her bosom swinging and sails shaking in the flat calm.

The preacher dragged on his clothes somehow, tore out of the house and down to the Point as fast as legs would carry him.  “Wha—­what’s the meanin’ of this?” he screeched, rushing up to Captain John, who was sighting one of his three little nine-pounders.

“Blest if I know!” said the captain.  “We was a peaceable lot enough till you and Mrs. Geen came a-visiting; but you two would play Hamlet’s ghost with a Quaker meeting.”

“It’s my Phoby—­they’re after my Phoby!” screamed Mrs. Geen, and then she turned on the fellow behind Captain John; it was Hosking, once a man-of-war’s man, and now supposed to be teaching her boy the carpentry trade. “This is what you bring en to, is it?  You deceiver, you!  You bare-faced villain!” (The man had a beard as big as a furze bush.) “Look at the poor lamb up there loadin’ the hosses, and to think I bore and reared en for this!  If you let one of they fellows lay hands on my Phoby I’ll scratch out ivery eye in your head . . .”