DOWN PAST THE H AGUE, around the Hook of Holland, Jack paid a visit on certain boat-owning fellows of his acquaintance, and learned, from them, that the French had banned the inexpensive cloth coming out of Calicoe in India. Naturally the Dutch were now smuggling it down the coast, and there was a steady traffic of the small cargo-vessels called flutes. Jack's friends ferried him, Turk, and a ton of Calicoe across Zeeland, which was the name the Dutch gave to the huge sandy morass where such rivers as the Maas and the Schelde emptied into the North Sea. But an autumn storm was blowing up in the Channel, and they had to take shelter in a little privateers' cove in Flanders. From there, Jack took advantage of a fortuitous low tide to make a night gallop down the coast to Dunkirk, and the hospitality of the dear old Bomb & Grapnel.