A wild merriment seized me, and I laughed aloud. Was it not a thing to laugh at, that of us two conspirators, Hans was galloping after the pretty pair over the wretched road through mist and drizzle, without the shadow of a reasonable ground for such a race; and was it not just as ridiculous, that I, who with such extravagant zeal and blindness, had been running from the morning until now, through storm and rain, tortured by countless anxieties, was a mere puppet, moved by a string whose end was held by two girls' hands, the one of which I, in my gratitude, had passionately kissed, and the other at least pressed cordially. Truly it would have been better if we had both stayed by our bottle in the warm room. "Look there!" said Pinnow, touching my shoulder, while at the same moment he gave the word, "Luff!" in a peculiar, long-drawn, suppressed tone. I perceived at but a few hundred yards distance a trimly-rigged schooner of moderate size, and I recognized at a glance one of the vessels of the coast-guard, named the Lightning. I had too often been on board her, and had sketched her too often under every possible arrangement of sails, to be deceived in her. "That is the _Lightning_," I exclaimed. At the same moment that the cutter went about, the _Lightning_ also altered her course and bore down on us. "Boat ahoy!" came through a speaking trumpet over the dash of the waves. My heart seemed to stop beating; my hand lay on the butt of my pistol. If Pinnow laid the cutter to, his treachery was proven. "Boat ahoy!" came over the water again. "Haul aft the foresail!" ordered Pinnow. I breathed again. Pinnow's order was equivalent to _sauve qui peut_. "Boat ahoy!" came their hail for the third time, and almost in the same moment there was a flash on board the _Lightning_, and the report of a musket, deadened by the distance and the plashing of the waves, reached my ear. "Shake out that reef in the jib!" ordered Pinnow. I took my hand from the pistol. There was now no doubt that Pinnow was doing his utmost to escape the pursuing vessel. My heart leaped with joy; the man at my side, of whom I had once been so fond, though he had never deserved my affection, was at all events no traitor. What would I have done if I had known that this was all a carefully arranged plan, in carrying out which the cold-blooded old villain was not in the least disturbed by my clumsy interference; that this meeting with the schooner was preconcerted in order to lead the latter upon the right track? That the flight and pursuit were merely feigned, to conceal the treachery from the other smugglers, and that the three or four blank cartridges that were fired from the schooner had the same object? What would I have done if I had known all this? Well for me that I did not know it; at least no blood of a fellow-creature cleaves to my hand. CHAPTER XVII.