“Now Tom thought that the men were to come up for the stuff and then to go on board the sloop, so as to get there before dark as she lay in the outer roads, about seven miles from the town; so says Tom, says he, ‘God bless your honour! I’ll have ’em up in the wink of a blind eye, and I’m sure they’ll thank your honour for your goodness. Is it rum or brandy?’--‘What do you mean?’ axed the marchant. ‘The cask, your honour,’ says Tom, ‘is it Gemaker, or Coney-hack?’--‘Neither the one nor the other,’ says the marchant; ‘them there are all dollars.’--‘Whew!’ whistles Tom; ‘now I understands your honour, but couldn’t we contrive to get ’em down in the cask just as they are; so that instead of making four or five trips, we may carry off the whole in the turning of a log-glass?’--‘I fear that ’ud be too great a risk,’ says the marchant; ‘or else I wish it could be done.’ ‘Why for the matter o’ the risk,’ says Tom, ‘there’s only one ould chap as I cares about; but he’s always boxing the compass of every thing that he catches sight on, living or dead. But I think I could get to windward of him, arter all’s said and done, and there’s no risk with the men, you know.’ So Tom was allowed to make trial of his skill; and away he goes and gets a purser’s bread-bag, and then walks off to the market and buys a couple o’ sheep’s heads, which he stows away in the bag along with a little hundred of cabbages and inyuns, till it was chock-full. Well, the cask of dollars was got into a cart, which drove off,--Tom keeping a good cable’s length a-head with his bread-bag over his shoulder and a piece of wood shaped like a sugar-loaf done up in a blue paper under his arm; for I should tell you, messmates, that was the way they used to smuggle off the solid silver, and the old coast-guard had made a prize of a couple of these sugar-loaves only a day or two afore. Well, on goes Tom, bending beneath his bag like a crank craft under whole topsails, and now and then taking a heavy lurch to draw attention. “The jetty runs a good two hundred yards into the river, and right in the teeth of the upper part on it stands the guard-house, where ould Jack Spaniard kept as sharp a look out as a Jew crimp upon pay-day, and presently he sees Tom rolling along and looking as wise as the cook’s-mate in a sudden squall. So he mounts a cockt-hat as big as a Guinea-man’s caboose with a feather in it as ’ud have sarved the whole Chatham division of jollies, and curling his mouthstarshers he marches up to Tom and bids him back his main-yard; but Tom took no notice for the moment, till the ould Signor cries out, ‘Blood and ounds,’ in Spanish, and then he pretends to cotch sight of him for the first time. Away starts Tom as if he was afraid of being boarded, and the Spaniard whips out his rapper, as they calls a sword in that country, and runs him right through the heart--” “God bless me!” exclaimed I, interrupting old Jennings; “what! did the poor fellow get murdered for his frolic?”