"Poor Cap'n Duff!" he exclaimed, in a low tone. "This is tough luck for him; and I must say, Rick Dale, that the whole thing is pretty much your fault, too. If you'd kept a half-way decent lookout you'd have seen that yawl when she was two miles off. Then we could have got under way, and given her the slip as easy as you please. Now you and I have lost our job, while Cap'n Duff will lose his and his boat besides. I'll never see my wages, either; and, worst of all, in spite of my invention working so smooth, these revenue fellows have got the laugh on us. I say it's too bad, though to be sure it does let us out of the smuggling business. I expect it will be a long time, though, before I get another job as first mate, or any other kind of a job that will be worth having."
"But, Bonny," interposed Alaric, anxious to defend his own reputation, "I wasn't told to look out for boats, but only to watch the cutter, and I hardly took my eyes off of her until you came."
"That's all right; only by the time you've knocked round the world as much as I have you'll find out that any fellow who expects to get promoted has got to do a heap of things besides those he's told to do. What he is told to do is generally only a hint of what he is expected to do. But just listen to the old man. Isn't he laying down the law to those chaps, though?"
The voices of those on the sloop came plainly to the ears of the hidden lads, and above them all roared and bellowed that of Captain Duff, as though he expected to overwhelm his enemies by sheer force of bluster.
"Chinamen!" he shouted--"Chinamen! No, sir, you won't find no Chinamen about this craft, nor nothing else onlawful.
"Smell 'em, do ye? Smell 'em! So do I now, and hev ever sence you revenooers come aboard. Seems like ye can't get the parfume out of your clothing.
"Going to seize the sloop anyway, be ye? Wal, ye kin do it, seeing as I'm all alone and a cripple. There'll come a day of reckoning, though--a day of reckoning, d'ye hear? I'm a free-born American citizen, and I'll protest agin this outrage till they hear me clear to Washington."
"He's heard over a good part of Washington this minute," whispered Bonny. "But what are they talking about now?"