Part 50

"You're missing your beauty sleep, Stokes," we heard our Viking remark.

"I'm not missing anything else, though," replied the coastguard.

"Like half a dozen mackerel for your breakfast?" inquired Mr. Benenden in kindly accents.

"I've no stomach for fish, thank you all the same," replied Mr. Stokes coldly.

He walked up and down on the beach, clapping his arms to keep himself warm.

"Going to see us unload her?" asked Mr. Benenden.

"If it's all the same to you," answered the disagreeable coastguard.

He had to wait a long time, for the cart did not come, and did not come, and kept on not coming for ages and ages. When it did the men unloaded the boat, carrying the fish by basketfuls to the cart.

Every one played up jolly well. They took the fish from the side of the hold where the keg wasn't till there was quite a deep hole there, and the other side, where the keg really was, looked like a mountain in comparison.

This could be plainly seen by the detested coastguard, and by three of his companions who had now joined him.

It was beginning to be light, not daylight, but a sort of ghost-light that you could hardly believe was the beginning of sunshine, and the sky being blue again instead of black.

The hated coastguard got impatient. He said--

"You'd best own up. It'll be the better for you. It's bound to come out, along of the fish. I know it's there. We've had private information up at the station. The game's up this time, so don't you make no mistake."

Mr. Benenden and the Viking and the boy looked at each other.

"An' what might your precious private information have been about?" asked Mr. Benenden.

"Brandy," replied the coastguard Stokes, and he went and got on to the gunwale. "And what's more, I can smell it from here."

Oswald and Dicky drew near, and the refreshment-room smell was stronger than ever. And a brown corner of the keg was peeping out.

"There you are!" cried the Loathed One. "Let's have that gentleman out, if you please, and then you'll all just come alonger me."

Remarking, with a shrug of the shoulders, that he supposed it was all up, our Viking scattered the fish that hid the barrel, and hoisted it out from its scaly bed.

"That's about the size of it," said the coastguard we did not like. "Where's the rest?"

"That's all," said Mr. Benenden. "We're poor men, and we has to act according to our means."

"We'll see the boat clear to her last timber, if you've no objections," said the Detestable One.

I could see that our gallant crew were prepared to go through with the business. More and more of the coastguards were collecting, and I understood that what the crew wanted was to go up to the coastguard station with that keg of pretending brandy, and involve the whole of the coastguards of Longbeach in one complete and perfect sell.

But Dicky was sick of the entire business. He really has not the proper soul for adventures, and what soul he has had been damped by what he had gone through.

So he said, "Look here, there's nothing in that keg but water."

Oswald could have kicked him, though he is his brother.

"Huh!" replied the Unloved One, "d'you think I haven't got a nose? Why, it's oozing out of the bunghole now as strong as Samson."

"Open it and see," said Dicky, disregarding Oswald's whispered instructions to him to shut up. "It is water."