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Take the lot of 'em, loyal man!" He fairly thrust him out to door, and had to lean a hand there before he could follow, feeling weak all over to think of Collector Wearne and his men, and what their faces must be like, down in the Revenue cutter; but he had no time to taste the fun of it properly, for just then he heard Bessie Bussow's voice outside asking questions all of a screech.
Carter had sent the lugger round at Wearne's particular request; she was short handed, and after a running fight of three or four hours the Frenchman put in a shot which sent her to the bottom and drowned fourteen hands. For this, as Wearne knew, he had never received proper compensation. I fancy the two came to an agreement to set one thing against another and call quits.
Wearne tried a fresh tack. "We'll take that yarn later on," he said. "You can't deny a cargo was run this morning." "We'll allow it for the moment. But that only proves that no boat was warned away." "And when I sent a boat in to capture it, you deliberately opened fire; in other words, tried to murder me, His Majesty's representative." "Tried to murder you? Look here."
But, of course, the fun wasn't finished yet. Soon after seven, and after the last of the cargo had been salved under their eyes, the preventive men drew off. By a quarter past eight Wearne had worked the cutter in as close as he dared, and then opened fire with his guns.
"Why, bless 'ee, I was no more in earnest than you were!" This made Wearne blush for his marksmanship. "But you'll have to prove that," he said. "Why, damme," said John Carter, and fined himself another sixpence on the spot; "if you are so partic'ler, get out there in the boat again, and I will."
At noon Wearne ceased firing, and sent off a boat towards Penzance. The Cove boys still held the battery; and the two parties had their dinners, lit their pipes and studied each other all the long after-noon. But towards five o'clock a riding company arrived to help the law, and opened a musket fire on the rear of the battery from the hedge at the top of the hill. The game was up now.
I didn't set anyone to fire them, and they waren't fired to warn anybody. Let alone I have proof they was sent up by a Methody preacher to relieve his feelin's. You've known me too long, Roger Wearne, to think me fool enough to waste a whole future joy over so simple a business as warnin' a boat." "What are you tellin' me?"
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.
The boys scattered and took shelter in Bessie Bussow's house, and Captain John, having hoisted a flag of truce, waited for Wearne and his boat with all the calmness in life. "A pretty day's work this!" was the collector's first word as he stepped ashore. "Amusin' from first to last," agreed Captain John in his cordial way. Says the collector slowly, "Well, tastes differ.
Well, the upshot was that after some palaver Wearne agreed to walk up to the captain's house and reckon the accounts between them. He had missed a pretty haul and been openly defied. On the other hand he hadn't a man hurt, and he knew the King's Government still owed John Carter for a lugger he had lent two years before to chase a French privateer lying off Ardevora.
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