“Stand by, Tim,” says the captain quietly.  “Drat the boat!  If she keeps bobbiting about like that I shall hit her, sure ’nuff!” Bang! went the little gun, and kicked backwards clean over its carriage.  The shot whizzed about six feet above the boat, and plunged into the heaving swell between it and the cutter.  “Bit too near, that.  I don’t want to hurt Roger Wearne, though he do make such tempting, ugly faces.”

“But what do they want?  What are they after?” stuttered the preacher.

“They’re after my Phoby!” cried Mrs. Geen.

“Not a bit of it,” said Captain John good-humouredly.  “From all I can see it’s the preacher here they want to collar.”

“Me!” screams the poor man—­“me!”

“Well, if you will go letting off rockets.  I dunno what it costs up to Walsall, or wherever you come from, but down in these parts ’tis a hundred pound or twelve calendar months.”

The preacher turned white and began to shake all of a sudden like a leaf.  “But I didn’t mean—­I had no idea—­you don’t intend to tell me—­” he stammered.

“Here, Tummels!” Captain John hailed a man who came running down to lend a hand with the guns.  “Take the preacher here and fix him on one of the horses; sling a keg each side of him if he looks like tumbling off.  Sorry to hurry you, sir,” he explained; “but ’tis for your good.  You must clear out of this before the officers get sight of your face, and I don’t know how much longer I can frighten ’em off.  When you get up to Trenowl you can cast loose and run, and it mayn’t be time wasted if you make up an alibi as you go along.  It don’t seem hospitable, I grant ee, but as a smuggler you’re too enterprising for this little out-o’-the-way cove.”

Tummels led the preacher away in too much of a daze to answer.  He opened his mouth, but at that moment bang! went Hosking with another of the guns.  By and by Captain John let out a chuckle as he saw the poor man moving up the cliff track, swaying between two kegs and clutching at his horse’s mane every time Tummels smacked the beast on the rump.  The horse he rode was almost the last.  By seven o’clock the boys had cleared the whole of their cargo, and still the preventive boat hung in the mouth of the Cove, pulling and backing and waiting for the chance Captain John never allowed them.

You see, Captain Harry, having dodged in behind the cutter without being spied, had a pretty start with the unloading.  When day broke, Mr. Wearne, finding no sean-boat or suspicious craft in sight, and allowing that there was no fear of another attempt before nightfall, had stood down again for Prussia Cove, meaning to send in a boat (for the cutter drew too much water) and have it out with Captain Carter about the rockets.  You can fancy his face when he came abreast the entrance and found the boys working like a hive of bees.  As for resistance, the King always swore he hadn’t an idea of it till Mrs. Geen put it into his head.  The battery was never intended for more than show.  “She’s a wonderful woman,” he declared; but he had a monstrous respect for all the Lemals.  “Blood in every one of ’em,” he said.