There was one nasty affair on Marazion Beach. Owing to a misunderstanding the cavalry came upon a swarm of tinners in process of making a landing. The tinners (who had broached a cask and were full of spirit in more senses than one) foolishly opened hostilities. The result was two troopers wounded, six miners killed—bearing out King Nick’s warning that the soldiers might easily be fooled, but they were by no means so easily frightened. The trade absorbed this lesson and there were no more regrettable incidents that season.
Ortho was satisfied with his winter’s work beyond all expectations. It was a common tenet among Free Traders of those days that one cargo saved would pay for two lost, and Ortho, so far from losing a single cargo, had only lost five tubs in all—three stove in transshipping and two when the mule carrying them fell into a pit. Everybody was satisfied. The district was flooded with cheap liquor. All the Covers in turn assisted in the boat-work and so picked up money in the off-season, when they needed it most. Pyramus, with his animals in constant employment, did so well that he delayed his northern trip for a month.
The only person (with the exception of His Majesty’s Collector of Customs) who was not entirely pleased was Eli. In defrauding the Revenue he had no scruples whatever, but it interfered with his farming. This smuggling was all very fine and remunerative, but it was a mere side line. Bosula was his lifework, his being. If he and Bohenna had to be up all night horse leading they could not be awake all day. The bracken was creeping in again. However, they were making money, heaps of it; there was no denying that.
With the instinctive dislike of a seaman for a landsman, and vice versa, neither Jacky’s George nor Pyramus would trust each other. The amphibious Ortho was the necessary link between them and, as such, paid out more or less what he thought fit—as has been the way with middlemen since the birthday of the world. He paid Jacky’s George one and six per cask for landing and Pyramus three shillings for packing (they went two to a horse), making a profit of ten shillings clear himself. Eli, the only person in the valley who could read, write or handle figures, kept the accounts and knew that at the end of March they were three hundred and forty pounds to the good. He asked Ortho where the money was.