“Now are you quite certain of this?” asked Carroway, with his grim face glowing in the moonlight, “I have had such a heap of cock and bulls about it. Morcom, are you certain?” “As certain, sir, as that I stand here, and you sit there, commander. Put me under guard, with a pistol to my ear, and shoot me if it turns out to be a lie.” “The Dovecote, you say? You are quite sure of that, and not the Kirk Cave, or Lyth's Hole?” “Sir, the Dovecote, and no other. I had it from my own young brother, who has been cheated of his share. And I know it from my own eyes too.” “Then, by the Lord in heaven, Morcom, I shall have my revenge at last; and I shall not stand upon niceties. If I call for the jolly-boat, you step in. I doubt if either of these will enter.” It was more than a fortnight since the lieutenant had received the attentions of a barber, and when he returned to his own boat, and changed her course inshore, he looked most bristly even in the moonlight. The sea and the moon between them gave quite light enough to show how gaunt he was--the aspect of a man who can not thrive without his children to make play, and his wife to do cookery for him. CHAPTER XXXIV THE DOVECOTE With the tiller in his hand, the brave lieutenant meditated sadly. There was plenty of time for thought before quick action would be needed, although the Dovecote was so near that no boat could come out of it unseen. For the pinnace was fetching a circuit, so as to escape the eyes of any sentinel, if such there should be at the mouth of the cavern, and to come upon the inlet suddenly. And the two other revenue boats were in her wake. The wind was slowly veering toward the east, as the Grimsby man had predicted, with no sign of any storm as yet, but rather a prospect of winterly weather, and a breeze to bring the woodcocks in. The gentle rise and fall of waves, or rather, perhaps, of the tidal flow, was checkered and veined with a ripple of the slanting breeze, and twinkled in the moonbeams. For the moon was brightly mounting toward her zenith, and casting bastions of rugged cliff in gloomy largeness on the mirror of the sea. Hugging these as closely as their peril would allow, Carroway ordered silence, and with the sense of coming danger thought: