"You must become my wife. There, the thing's out; so now, what have you got to say?"

"I say, no!"

"That's your decision?"

"That's my decision."

"Be careful, gal. I only asked you to marry a me to give you a chance; remember you're n.o.body's child, and I've hooked on to the secret."

"You're a mean man, Sol Burton, to threaten me!"

"Well, the fact is, Renie, I like you! I'm dead in love with you, and I'm willing to marry yer, and that's more than most of the fellows round here would do, knowing all I know."

"Good-night, Sol Burton, I'll not stop to talk with you, nor will I tell my father that you said insulting words to me."

"What do you suppose I care about Tom Pearce? I can whisper a few words in his ear that will take some of the starch out of him! He's been mighty uppish about you, although he's let you run round the beach barefoot these sixteen years."

"Go talk to Tom Pearce, and do not be the coward to repeat your threats to me!"

The girl started to move away, when the man suddenly leaped forward and grasped her in his arms, but the same instant he received a blow which sent him reeling, as the girl was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his rude grasp.

A curse fell from the man's lips, and he arose to his feet and advanced toward the man who had struck him.

"Run home, little girl!" whispered the detective; "I will take care of this brute!"

"Thank you!" said the girl, and she glided away along the beach.

"See here, you're the man who struck me?"

"Yes; I'm the man."

"I think I've seen you before."

"I think we've met before."

"What did you hit me for?"

"I struck you because you put your hands rudely upon the girl."

"Yer did, eh?"

"Yes."

The man leaned toward the detective with the remark:

"Well, it's my turn now!"

And his turn it proved to be, as he received a rap, which caused him to turn clean over.

Sol Burton was raving mad when he once more regained his feet; the fellow was an ugly chap, a great bully ash.o.r.e, and a cruel heartless man afloat. As he arose he exclaimed:

"All right, you're fixed for me to-night; but my time will come! I'll get square with you before you're much older!"

Sol Burton turned and walked away a baffled man.

Spencer Vance walked to the point on the beach where he had stood when the girl had come to him with the strange warning.

The young man was a Government officer, a special detective, and had been a.s.signed to the collector at the port of New York to run down an organized gang of smugglers who were known to be doing a large business off the Long Island coast.

Several detectives had been detailed to work up the matter, and one after another they had mysteriously disappeared, and the Government had never succeeded in solving the mystery of their taking off; and further, none of the officers had ever been able to locate the head-quarters of the gang.

One fact had been established: large quant.i.ties of smuggled goods had been carried into New York, and each week the Government was swindled out of thousands of dollars of revenue; and the illicit traffic had grown to such an extent that a number of honest merchants had subscribed a large sum of money which had been placed at the disposal of the collector to be used as a fund for the breaking up of the gang, who were ruining regular importers in certain branches of trade and commerce.

Spencer Vance, although but a young man, had quite a reputation as a detective. He had done some daring work in running down a gang of forgers, and in the employ of a State Government, he had been very successful in breaking up several gangs of illicit whisky distillers. He was a resolute, cool, experienced man, an officer who had faced death a hundred times under the most perilous circ.u.mstances. and when summoned upon the new duty he accepted the position readily.

By methods of his own he got upon the track of the workers; the men who did the actual work of landing the contraband goods.

The latter were not the really guilty men. They were not the princ.i.p.als, the capitalists; but they were the employees who for large pay ran off the coast, intercepted the steamers carrying the contraband goods, and landed them within certain a.s.signed limits.

The men ostensibly were fishermen, and honest people among whom they a.s.sociated never "tumbled" to their real calling.

CHAPTER III.

The necessities of our narrative do not demand that we should locate the exact quarter where the smugglers operated; and, besides, as there were numerous gangs covering a s.p.a.ce of fifty miles along the coast, it would be almost impossible to indicate intelligibly the field of their operations, were we so inclined.

Spencer Vance, as stated, had adopted his own measures for locating the men; in his earlier life he had been a sailor, and had worked his way up until at the age of nineteen he held the position of second mate on a large schooner; and when he was a.s.signed to the special duty of "piping" the smugglers, his sea experience came in good play, and was of great aid to kiln in his perilous duty.

The officer started out on his work by taking pa.s.sage to the Island of Cuba, and one day in the port of Havana a ragged sailor dropped into a groggery kept by a Frenchman and made himself acquainted with a number of sailors, who were having a good time ash.o.r.e.

The ragged Jack told his own tale, won upon the good-will of the jolly fellows who were in for a good time, and in the end was shipped for New York on a fast-sailing schooner.

The detective had an eye on the schooner, and well knew, when as a sea-tramp he shipped on the vessel, he had struck a smuggler.

It was a clear starry night when the vessel sighted the Long Island sh.o.r.e after having slipped inward past Fire Island.

The detective lay low and watched for some hours.

He had known that something unusual was in progress on board the schooner. The captain was below, and one of the mates had charge of the deck; a light shone in the distance, like a red star dancing over the waves, and the men on the schooner moved about in a stealthy manner to and fro across the deck.

It was a strange thing to do; why should they tread thus lightly the deck of a ship ten miles off sh.o.r.e, as though their footsteps might be heard? Alas! it was a case of involuntary stealth, a sign of the nervous, trepidation which attends conscious guilt.

It did not seem that there could be any danger near; the heavens were clear, the bosom of the deep unruffled even by an evening breeze. Nature called not for the coward tread, and the gleaming eye, the pale face, and the anxious glance hither and thither. No, no; but the smugglers feared another peril.

Revenue cutters were known to be cruising along the coast; more than ordinary vigilance was being exercised by a robbed Government.

The men upon the schooner knew that the revenue officers were up to many of their tricks and were posted as to many of their signals; false lights might gleam across the waters like an ignis fatuus luring on a famished traveler in the desert, and within the hour after their calling had been betrayed, every man might be in irons, and the cargo and the vessel would be confiscated.