Jim was another burly young fellow in a blue guernsey, a fisherman, part owner of a little bit of a smack with a brown mainsail. The two stalwart young fishermen ran along the quay, and one of them dropped down into a boat that was chained to an angle in the quay-side, where there was a flight of slimy stone steps leading down to the water. The other young man ran off to get some of the boat's tackle and a couple of shaggy overcoats. "We'd best take something to eat and drink, sir," the young man said, as he came running back with these things; "we may be out all night, if we try to catch yon vessel." Mr. Carter gave the man a sovereign, and told him to get what he thought proper. "You'd best have something to cover you besides what you've got on, sir," the fisherman said; "you'll find it rare and cold on 't water after dark." Mr. Carter assented to this proposition, and hurried off to buy himself a railway rug; he had left his own at the railway station in Sawney Tom's custody. He bought one at a shop near the quay, and was back to the steps in ten minutes. The fisherman in the blue guernsey was in the boat, which was a stout-built craft in her way. The fisherman in the scarlet guernsey made his appearance in less than five minutes, carrying a great stone bottle, with a tin drinking-cup tied to the neck of it, and a rush basket filled with some kind of provision. The stone bottle and the basket were speedily stowed away in the bottom of the boat, and Mr. Carter was invited to descend and take the seat pointed out to him. "Can you steer, sir?" one of the men asked. Yes, Mr. Carter was able to steer. There was very little that he had not learned more or less in twenty years' knocking about the world. He took the rudder when they had pushed out into the open water, the two young men dipped their oars, and away the boat shot out towards that seaward horizon on which only the keenest eyes could discover the black speck that represented the _Crow_. "If it should be a sell, after all," thought Mr. Carter; "and yet that's not likely. If he wanted to double on me and get back to London, he'd have gone by one of the trains we've watched; if he wanted to lie-by and hide himself in the town, he wouldn't have disposed of any of his diamonds yet awhile—and then, on the other hand, why should the _Crow_ have sailed before she'd got the whole of her cargo on board? Anyhow, I think I have been wise to risk it, and follow the _Crow_. If this is a wild-goose chase, I've been in wilder than this before to-day, and have caught my man." The little fishing smack behaved bravely when she got out to sea; but even with the help of the oars, stoutly plied by the two young men, they gained no way upon the _Crow_, for the black speck grew fainter and fainter upon the horizon-line, and at last dropped down behind it altogether.