Stair's clenched fist shut in the remainder of the sentence. The Rathlain man choked as he swallowed a couple of teeth, and felt his raw lip acrid upon the gap.
"Tell them you lie--tell them before you spit--or I will send the rest of your teeth after those two!"
The man gasped out that "Sure it was only a joke--"
"A joke, was it?" said Stair fiercely; "then I hope you will consider the teeth you have swallowed as the cream of it!"
The men were silent--not from fear at all, but because any two of them had a right to settle such differences in their own way.
"Will the Irishman not sell us because of Stair Garland's fist closing his mouth so awkward like?" inquired a second Rerrick man, lying at the shoulder of Godfrey McCulloch.
"Not by a great deal," said Godfrey, "perhaps he will kill Stair if he can, though Stair is more likely to kill him. But he will not lay information as to the lads of the Free Trade. He will remember what happened to Luke Finney and James Tynan when they thought to lift the hundred pound reward out for Captain Maxwell of the Scaur."
"What was that?" said the youth at his elbow.
"Have you not heard? It is a Colvend story, too," said McCulloch. "We took them out into mid-channel and tied each man to an old anchor with his fifty pounds in jingling gold about his neck. For which cause Luke Finney and James Tynan, two rusty anchors and a hundred guineas of unrusted gold lie in the gut of the North Channel to this day."
"Is the water deep?" the young man asked.
"Deeper than any diver will reach till the judgment day," quoth Godfrey. "This Rathlin man will think twice before he plays Judas to the lads of the Trade."
"It must have been worst when they were over the side before the anchors went plunk!" The young fellow shuddered. A clean death in a fair fight he did not mind more than another, but dangling there tied to an anchor--"_Ugh!_" said the lad.
That night a cargo was to be run into the Abbey Burnfoot Bay, close by the house of Julian Wemyss. The King's ships had settled themselves, one in Belfast Lough, and the sloop-of-war well round the point into Loch Ryan. The _Good Intent_ might therefore discharge her cargo in peace, and the boats were ready on the beach of the Water Cave to put the Inch Ryan refugees in charge of the pack horses which were to carry the stuff inland, distributing as they went.