"
"Not without smugglers, I fancy, Mr. Marble, if contriving to get
other people's property without their knowledge, can make a
smuggler. I never saw a more thorough-looking thief than the chap we
have nick-named the Dipper. I believe he would swallow one of our
iron spoons, rather than not get it!"
"Ay, there's no mistake about him, 'Master Mile,' as Neb calls
you. But this fellow here, hasn't brains enough to tell his own
property from that of another man. I would let him into our
bread-lockers, without any dread of his knowing enough to eat. I never
saw such a vacancy in a human form; a down-east idiot would wind him
up in a trade, as handily as a pedlar sets his wooden clocks in
motion."
Such was Marble's opinion of the sagacity of Mr. Smudge; and, to own
the truth, such, in a great measure, was my own. The men laughed at
the remarks--seamen are a little apt to laugh at chief-mates' wit--and
their looks showed how thoroughly they coincided with us in
opinion. All this time, the boat had been pushing ahead, and it soon
reached the mouth of the little creek.
We found the inlet deep, but narrow and winding. Like the bay itself,
it was fringed with trees and bushes, and this in a way to render it
difficult to get a view of anything on the land; more especially as
the banks were ten or fifteen feet in height.
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