Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/259

 sce from here; only two masts. It’s a brig. Didn’t think that man would ever let himself be caught. Heemskirk’s pretty smart, too. They say she’s fitted out in her cabin like a gentleman’s yacht. That Allen is a sort of gentleman too. An extravagant beggar.”

A young man entered smartly Messrs. Mesman Brothers’ office on the “front,” bubbling with some further information.

“Oh, yes; that’s the Bonito for certain! But you don’t know the story I’ve heard just now. The fellow must have been feeding that river with firearms for the last year or two. Well, it seems he has grown so reckless from long impunity that he has actually dared to sell the very ship’s rifles this time. It’s a fact. The rifles are not on board. What impudence! Only, he didn’t know that there was one of our warships on the coast. But those Englishmen are so impudent that perhaps he thought that nothing would be done to him for it. Our courts do let off these fellows too often, on some miserable excuse or other. But, at any rate, there's an end of the famous Bonito. I have just heard in the harbour-office that she must have gone on at the very top of high-water; and she is in ballast, too. No human power, they think, can move her from where she is. I only hope it is so. It would be fine to have the notorious Bonito stuck up there as a warning to others.”

Mr. J. Mesman, a colonial-born Dutchman, a kind, paternal old fellow, with a clean-shaven, quiet, handsome face, and a head of fine iron-grey hair curling a little on his collar, did not say a word in defence of Jasper and the Bonito. He rose from his arm-chair