“Paddle round in half the time takes t' walk,” he said. “No back breakin', no bone shakin 's my morter. Down she goes.”
Wesley was glad to accept a seat in the stern sheets of the small boat which was run down to the water, not twenty yards from the building shed; and when he returned with the three boatmen to that part of the coast from which he had walked, he found the man to whose aid he had come sitting up and able to say a word or two to the revenue man, who was kneeling beside him, having just taken his empty rum bottle from his mouth.
Old Garvice looked as if he felt that he had been brought from his work under false pretences. He plodded slowly across the intervening piece of beach a long way behind Mr. Wesley, and the Preventive man had reported the progress to recovery made by the other before the Garvice family had come up. The Garvices had had more than a nodding acquaintance with the revenue authorities before this morning.
“John Bennet is a bigger rascal than I thought, and that's going far,” said the Preventive man when Wesley told him that no message had been given at the Port. “If I come face to face with him, them that's nigh will see some blood-letting. Why, e'en Ned Garvice, that I've been trying to lay a trap for this twelve year, lets bygones be bygones when there's a foundered man to succour.”
“Where is 'un?” enquired the old man with pointed satire, looking round with a blank face.
The bedraggled man sitting on the beach was able to smile.
“Wish I'd had the head to bid you ask Neddy Garvice to carry hither a bottle of his French brandy--ay, the lot that you run ashore when the cutter fouled on the bank,” said the Preventive man.
“Oh, that lot? Had I got a billet from you, Freddy Wise, I'd ha' put a stoup from the kegs o' the _Gorgon_ into my pocket,” said the old man wickedly. Mr. Wesley did not know that the _Gorgon_ was a large ship that had come ashore the previous year, and had been stripped bare by the wreckers. “Oh, ay; the _Gorgon_ for brandy and the _Burglarmaster_ for schnapps, says I, and I sticks to that object o' creed, Freddy, whatsoe'er you says.” The _Bourghermeister_ was the name of another wreck whose stores the revenue men had been too slow to save some years before.
