the Numancia away out of territorial waters.

He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of
that tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging breathless, in
the costume you know, on the fair land of France, in the character
of a smuggler of war material. However, they had never arrested or
expelled him, since he was there before my eyes. But how and why
did he get so far from the scene of his sea adventure was an
interesting question. And I put it to him with most naive
indiscretion which did not shock him visibly. He told me that the
ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband cargo aboard was
doubtless in good condition. The French custom-house men were
guarding the wreck. If their vigilance could be--h'm--removed by
some means, or even merely reduced, a lot of these rifles and
cartridges could be taken off quietly at night by certain Spanish
fishing boats. In fact, salved for the Carlists, after all. He
thought it could be done. . . .

I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet
nights (rare on that coast) it could certainly be done.

Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the highly
inconvenient zeal of the French custom-house people that had to be
dealt with in some way.

"Heavens!" I cried, astonished. "You can't bribe the French
Customs. This isn't a South-American republic."

"Is it a republic?" he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his
wooden pipe.