During the weeks in which Dick had been thus occupied, no further annoyance was suffered from the villagers. Sir Bevil’s warning had apparently taken effect. Penwarden reported that two more serious checks had been given to the smugglers. Once they had been interrupted in the act of running a cargo at Lunnan Cove, some miles to the south, and a hundred tubs had been seized by Mr. Mildmay. A few days later, the cutter had gone in chase of a lugger in a stiff gale, and the seamanship of the smugglers being at least equal to that of the King’s men, the quarry had escaped. But her crew, not daring to run the cargo while the revenue officers were on the alert, had sunk the tubs, which were always carried ready slung to meet such an emergency, in five fathoms of water beyond St. Cuby’s Cove. In their hurry, however, the work was not done so carefully as usual, with the result that one of the tubs was chafed off the sinking rope, drifted about, and next morning was descried by Penwarden from the cliff. He informed Mr. Mildmay. The shallow water along the shore was systematically searched, and the whole cargo was hooked up by means of "creeps," as the grapnels were called. Rumour, reaching the Towers by way of the Parsonage, said that on both these occasions Tonkin was the freighter, so that his loss by the successive failures was probably not far short of £300. Tidings came, also, by the local carrier, of renewed activity on the part of the _Aimable Vertu_ in the Channel. A revenue cruiser had fought an action with her off the Lizard, and was worsted, her commander being wounded, and the vessel only escaping by running in shore to shallow water, where the privateer could not follow. The authorities, already deeply incensed by the escape of Delarousse from Plymouth, were furious at this recurrence of his depredations, and had offered a high price for information of his movements, and a still higher reward to any officer who should capture him. For a few days Dick laid up his new boat, when fishing was done, in the mouth of the little stream on which he had launched it, tramping back with Sam over the four miles to the Towers. But this became irksome, and he tried to think of some means of keeping the craft nearer home without running the risk of its destruction by the smugglers. After a good deal of anxious consideration he hit upon the idea of building a shed for it on the beach at the foot of the cliff. "Jown me if I see the good o’ ’t," said Sam, when Dick explained his plan. "They’ll break into the shed, or fire it, if they want to, and we’ll lose our boat and our labour too." "But I’ve thought of a way of preventing that, Sam. They won’t interfere with it in daylight: ’tis only the night we need fear. Well, we’ll make ’em give us warning of any trick they play." "I don’t see how, unless they be born fools."