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And he was well aweary. A little tug had laid hold of the Tryapsic, and with clang and clatter and shouted command, with engines half-ahead, slow-speed, or half-astern, the battered old sea-tramp was nudged and nosed and shouldered through the dock-gates into Ring's End Basin. Lines were flung ashore, fore and aft, and a 'midship spring got out.
The ragged Jack told his own tale, won upon the good-will of the jolly fellows who were in for a good time, and in the end was shipped for New York on a fast-sailing schooner. The detective had an eye on the schooner, and well knew, when as a sea-tramp he shipped on the vessel, he had struck a smuggler.
A fortune was at stake, and the shadow of a prison loomed out over across the waters and threatened to close in behind them. Spencer Vance, the disguised detective, the supposed sea-tramp, moved about with the smugglers, acting as they acted, stepping on tiptoe, and looking pale and anxious, and it did not require that he should assume the pale excited look, for it was a momentous crisis.
But what the deuce! He was human; he was a machine only when on the hunt. He had found Spurlock. In his condition the boy apparently had been as safe as in the lock-up. Why shouldn't James Boyle pinch out a little fun while waiting? How was he to anticipate the girl and the sea-tramp called The Tigress?
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