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Misfortunes never come single; not more'n six weeks ago he lost three hundred keg of brandy, by information, so I'm told." All nonsense! Porthleah never lost but one keg in all John Carter's time, and that was a leaky one in a pool at Pisky's which the custom-house fellows sniffed as they went by.
Austell Bay would be patrolled by half a dozen man-of-war's boats in addition to the water-guard: and this meant Dan'l's losing the lugger, losing his life too, maybe, or at the least being made prisoner. Well, and why not? Wasn't one man master enough for Porthleah Cove? And hadn't Dan'l and the girl deserved it?
My mother's grandfather, Dan'l Leggo, was the piousest man that ever went smuggling, and one of the peaceablest, and scrupulous to an extent you wouldn't believe. He learnt his business among the Cove boys at Porthleah or Prussia Cove as it came to be called, after John Carter, the head of the gang, that was nicknamed the King o' Prussia.
"Aw, good-afternoon, Mr. Geen!" "Good-afternoon!" responded Phoby. "Who'd ever ha' thought to meet you here, Miss Sanders?" "'Tis a tiring way from Porthleah to St. Ives, Mr. Geen." "Or from Porthleven, for that matter, Miss Sanders." "Especially when you walk it on tippy-toe, which must be extra-wearisome to a body on feet shaped like yours, Mr. Geen." Phoby saw that he was fairly caught.
Tummels made a motion to draw out a musket from under the straw where Dan'l lay. "If I thought that," he growled, "I'd walk straight over to Porthleah, wait for him, and blow his scheming brains out." "You'd be a bigger fool, then, than I take ye for," answered the doctor quietly, "and I know you've but wits enough for one thing at a time.
But the devil stirred him up to remember the insult he'd received from Amelia Sanders that very day; and by and by, as he walked home to Porthleah, there came into his mind a far wickeder thought. Partners though he and Dan'l were, each owned the boat he commanded, or all but a few shares in her.
What he did was to put on a frown, and, said he, "Looky here, Mr. Geen, I've been wanting to see you or Leggo for some days, to give you fair notice. I happen to have lost sight of the Nonesuch for some days; though I conclude, from meeting you, that she's back at Porthleah at her moorings.
If we are tired of shipwrecks, perhaps we are not tired of smugglers, and we come on their footsteps in very vivid fashion at Prussia Cove, whose original name was Porthleah. The place was a veritable hot-bed of smuggling long before the days of John Carter, prince of smugglers, who went by the name of King of Prussia, and gave its present name to the little cove.
A Cover called Tummels drove with him, bandaged also; and stopping the chaise a mile outside Marazion, lifted Dan'l out, managed to hire a cart from a farm handy-by the road, and so brought him, more dead than alive, home to Porthleah. But though more dead than alive, Dan'l had not lost his wits.
Tummels, all this while, kept quiet at Porthleah, like a wise man, and sat watching Phoby Geen like a cat before a mousehole. Phoby had turned up at the Cove in the Nonesuch on the fourth day after the lugger was lost, and at once began crying out, as innocent as you please, upon the mess that Dan'l had made through his wrongheadedness.
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