"Let me alone, Jack, and don't put my back up. I'll lay my life, if
there was any concerting in it, 'twas between Robin and the maid
Barbara. Well, girls have queer fancies!--Who'd ha' thought she'd ha'
fancied Robin?--though he's a brave sound-hearted little fellow; yet
who'd ha' thought she'd have preferred him to--to----"
"To you, I suppose. Lord, Springall, there's no coming up to the women.
Bless ye, I've seen those who loved apes, and parrots, and puppy-dogs,
and took more pride and pleasure in them than in their own lawful
husbands and born children! What d'ye think o' that? Why, would you
believe it? a girl I loved better than my heart's blood took a fancy to
an old man, and sent me adrift, though I was a likely fellow then--ah!
different, very different to what I am now;" and Jack Roupall, leaning
his elbows on his knees, that were wide apart, commenced drawing, with
the butt end of his pistol, figures on the sand, which the wind, whether
in anger or sportiveness, had flung upon the crag. After a lengthened
pause, he looked suddenly up at the youth Springall, who still sat
opposite to him, and said abruptly, "Are you sure you made no mistake?"
"Am I sure of the sight of my eyes, or the hearing of my ears?" returned
the lad. "I was as close to the troopers as I am to you, though they saw
me not, and their entire talk was of the Gull's Nest, and how they were
all to be down here soon after sunrise; and a deal of jokes, in their
own way, they passed upon it--stiff dry jokes, that were as hard to
swallow as a poker."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the smuggler; "how they will pray when they see the
crag dancing in the air! It would be ill done towards the secret
stations of our friends on other parts of the coast, to let these
fellows find the ins and outs of such a place as this; it would be
holding a candle to the devil--giving them a guide to lead them on
through all their plans henceforward and for ever. The Gull's Nest shall
go after the Fire-fly. It gives me joy to mar their sport--their peeping
and prying. But we will not let off the train until we see them pretty
close upon us. The Roundhead rascals shall have the full benefit of our
gay bonfire. 'Ods rot it! what else could we do, but make a gay ending
of it at once. A gay ending!" he repeated--"a gay ending! No rock to
mark the spot of so much merriment, so much joviality, so much spoil!
Ah! in a hundred years, few can tell where the watchers of the Gull's
Nest Crag lighted beacon and brand for the free rovers of the free sea!"