Part 46

"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was this by his jersey and his sea-boots.

The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him, bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.

At last he took his pipe out of his mouth and said--

"Here's a precious Quakers' meeting! You didn't set down here just for to look at me?"

"I'm sure you look very nice," Dora said.

"Same to you, miss, I'm sure," was the polite reply.

"We want to talk to you awfully," said Alice, "if you don't mind?"

"Talk away," said he.

And then, as so often happens, no one could think of anything to say.

Suddenly Noël said, "I think you look nice too, but I think you look as though you had a secret history. Have you?"

"Not me," replied the Viking-looking stranger. "I ain't got no history, nor jog-graphy neither. They didn't give us that much schooling when I was a lad."

"Oh!" replied Noël; "but what I really meant was, were you ever a pirate or anything?"

"Never in all my born," replied the stranger, now thoroughly roused; "I'd scorn the haction. I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder. Pirates is snakes, and they ought to be killed as such."

We felt rather sorry, for though of course it is very wrong to be a pirate, it is very interesting too. Things are often like this. That is one of the reasons why it is so hard to be truly good.

Dora was the only one who was pleased. She said--

"Yes, pirates are very wrong. And so are highwaymen and smugglers."

"I don't know about highwaymen," the old man replied; "they went out afore my time, worse luck; but my father's great-uncle by the mother's side, he see one hanged once. A fine upstanding fellow he was, and made a speech while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the women was snivelling and sniffing and throwing bokays at him."

"Did any of the bouquets reach him?" asked the interested Alice.

"Not likely," said the old man. "Women can't never shy straight. But I shouldn't wonder but what them posies heartened the chap up a bit. An afterwards they was all a-fightin' to get a bit of the rope he was hung with, for luck."

"Do tell us some more about him," said all of us but Dora.

"I don't know no more about him. He was just hung--that's all. They was precious fond o' hangin' in them old far-away times."

"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked H.O.--"to speak to, I mean?"

"Ah, that's tellings," said the old man, and he winked at us all.

So then we instantly knew that the coastguards had been mistaken when they said there were no more smugglers now, and that this brave old man would not betray his comrades, even to friendly strangers like us. But of course he could not know exactly how friendly we were. So we told him.

Oswald said--

"We love smugglers. We wouldn't even tell a word about it if you would only tell us."

"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father was a boy," he said; "my own father's cousin, his father took to the smuggling, and he was a doin' so well at it, that what does he do, but goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps him in Dover Jail."

"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"