'There ain't naught amiss
with her rudder,' said the foreman. 'There she lies, with the
red streaks.' At that moment who should come down but Mordecai
Smith, the missing owner? He was rather the worse for liquor. I
should not, of course, have known him, but he bellowed out his
name and the name of his launch. 'I want her to-night at eight
o'clock,' said he,--'eight o'clock sharp, mind, for I have two
gentlemen who won't be kept waiting.' They had evidently paid
him well, for he was very flush of money, chucking shillings
about to the men. I followed him some distance, but he subsided
into an ale-house: so I went back to the yard, and, happening to
pick up one of my boys on the way, I stationed him as a sentry
over the launch. He is to stand at water's edge and wave his
handkerchief to us when they start. We shall be lying off in the
stream, and it will be a strange thing if we do not take men,
treasure, and all."
"You have planned it all very neatly, whether they are the right
men or not," said Jones; "but if the affair were in my hands I
should have had a body of police in Jacobson's Yard, and arrested
them when they came down."
"Which would have been never. This man Small is a pretty shrewd
fellow.
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