"Aye, sure," says Rockett. "A ship as flies no flag is like a robber wi’ a mask." "Ah! what’s this?" exclaimed the deputy, who was looking through his spy-glass. "Yes, ’tis old Sam Robins in his boat. They hail him from the frigate; he goes alongside. Fool! e has handed up his fish and gone aboard!" "Blid and ’ouns!" sang Rockett. "Like enough he hath been made a prisoner!" ’Twas true enough; old Robins had been swallowed up, even as Tye and his men were, two hours earlier. Faith! ’twas like the messengers whom Joram sent to Jehu; for whosoever went aboard those ships came not back again. Alas for poor Sam Robins’ his sale of fish that morning was to prove the worst he ever made, and cost him dearly in the future. "I go to seek the Mayor," quoth Dassell, and so passed through the crowd and left us. With all the happenings of that fateful day I will not weary you. Hour by hour excitement grew, till everyone was on the tiptoe of perplexity and expectation. As for the Mayor of Lyme, one Gregory Alford, he was wellnigh beside himself because of these three mysterious ships which thus kept beating up and down our bay, and (though a gun was fired from shore) refused to answer or to send the King’s boat back to land. A Royalist to his finger-tips, and owner of two vessels doing a fine trade in cloths with the merchants of Morlaix, he was also a bitter persecutor of the Nonconformists, and, at that very time, had the minister and leaders locked up snugly in the jail. For the which he was much hated, Lyme being then a hot-bed of dissent. Thus, when, scarce knowing what he did, he had the town drums beaten, and called out the town guard (a sorry tag of ill-armed men), the people laughed and jeered, and asked how that was going to help the matter. Not till the afternoon was well advanced did I bethink me to go home, and then ’twas to find the place deserted, save for old Anne, the housekeeper; and she, poor soul, was sorely deaf. After much bawling, I made out that news of the ships had reached even to this quiet spot, and that all our faithless hands--groom, gardener, boy, and everyone--had gone down to the Cobb. As for my father, she handed me a letter from him. It told me that he had received an urgent summons eight miles inland to the bedside of an old friend who lay dying, and that he would not return till nightfall. A _post scriptum_ bade me watch the garden when the dusk came. This suited me right well. Laughing at the thought of Tubal Ammon, I saddled my mare (the ever-faithful Kitty), rode back to the town, and, having put my horse up at the "George" there, hurried seawards. ’Twas now high tide, and thus the Cobb was cut off from the land;[1] but a great crowd was gathered on the shore, with the drums and town guard in the rear. [1] The Cobb did not then, as now, join the land, but was out off from it at high water.