"Yes," he said, still carelessly, "over at Black Pool? I suppose they recognized you?"

"Yes, they must have. We three are known all over the place. And I ran to tell you."

"So I see," he said grimly. "You seem to have run like a tea-ship. Well, you needn't have. There's no cave on this side Salcombe, except the hole at Tor Cross. What made you run to tell me?"

"Oh," I said, "you've been so kind—so kind, and—I don't know—I thought they'd send you to prison."

"Did you?" he said gruffly. "Did you indeed? Well, they won't. There was no call for you to fret your little self. Still, you've done it; I'll remember that—I'll always remember that. Now you be off to your tea, quick. Cut!"

When he gave an order it was always well for us to obey it at once; if we did not he used to lose his temper. So when he told me to go I got up and turned away, but slowly, for I was still out of breath. I looked back before I passed behind the hedge which marks the beginning of the combe, but Marah had disappeared—I could see no trace of him. Then suddenly, from somewhere behind me, out of sight, an owl called—and this in broad daylight. Three times the "Too-hoo, too-hoo" rose in a long wail from the shrubs, and three times another owl answered from up the combe, and from up the valley, too, till the place seemed full of owls. "Too-hoo, too-hoo" came the cries, and very faintly came answers—some of them in strange tones, as though the criers asked for information. As they sounded, the first owl answered in sharp, broken cries. But I had had enough. Breathless as I was, I ran on up the valley to the house, only hoping that no owl would come swooping down upon me. And this is what happened. Just as I reached the gate which leads to the little bridge below the house I saw Joe Barnicoat galloping towards me on an unsaddled horse of Farmer Rowser's. He seemed shocked, or upset, at seeing me; but he kicked the horse in the ribs and galloped on, crying out that he was having a little ride. His little ride was taking him at a gallop to the owl, and I was startled to find that quiet Joe, the mildest gardener in the county, should be one of the uncanny crew whose signals still hooted along the combes.

When I reached home the others jeered at me for a sluggard. They had been at home for twenty minutes, and had begun tea. I let them talk as they pleased, and then settled down to work; but all that night I dreamed of great owls, riding in the dark with bee-skeps over them, filling the combes with their hootings.



CHAPTER VII

THE TWO COASTGUARDS

The next morning, when Hugh and I came to Strete for our lessons, we found a lot of yeomen and preventives drawn up in the village. People were talking outside their houses in little excited groups. Jan Edeclog, the grocer, was at the door of his shop, wiping his hands on his apron. There was a general rustle and stir, something had evidently happened.

"What's all the row about, Mr Edeclog?" I asked.

"Row?" he asked. "Row enough, Master Jim. Two of the coastguards, who were on duty yesterday afternoon, have disappeared. It's thought there's been foul play."

My heart sank into my boots, my head swam, I could hardly stand upright. All my thought was: "They have been killed. And all through my telling Marah. And I'm a murderer."

I don't know how I could have got to the Rectory gate, had not the militia captain come from the tavern at that moment. He mounted his horse, called out a word of command, and the men under him moved off towards Slapton at a quick trot.

"They have gone to beat the Lay banks," said some one, and then some one laughed derisively.

I walked across to the Rectory and flung my satchel of books on to the floor. The Rector's wife came into the hall as we entered. "Why, Jim," she said, "what is the matter? Aren't you well?"

"Not very," I answered.

"My dear," she cried to her husband, "Jim's not well. He looks as though he'd seen a ghost, poor boy."

"Why, Jim," said the Rector, coming out of the sitting-room, "what's the matter with you? Had too much jam for breakfast?"

"No," I said. "But I feel faint. I feel sick. Can I go to sit in the garden for a minute?"

"Yes," he answered. "Certainly. I'll get you a glass of cold water."

I was really too far gone to pay much heed to anything. I think I told them that I should be quite well in a few minutes, if they would leave me there; and I think that Mrs Evans told her husband to come indoors, leaving me to myself. At any rate they went indoors, and then the cool air, blowing on me from the sea, refreshed me, so that I stood up.

I could think of nothing except the words: "I am a murderer." A wild wish came to me to run to the cliffs by Black Pool to see whether the bodies lay on the grass in the place where I had seen them (full of life) only a few hours before. Anything was better than that uncertainty. In one moment a hope would surge up in me that the men would not be dead; but perhaps only gagged and bound: so that I could free them. In the next there would be a feeling of despair, that the men lay there, dead through my fault, killed by Marah's orders, and flung among the gorse for the crows and gulls. I got out of the Rectory garden into the road; and in the road I felt strong enough to run; and then a frenzy took hold of me, so that I ran like one possessed. It is not very far to Black Pool; but I think I ran the whole way. I didn't feel out of breath when I got there, though I had gone at top speed; a spirit had been in me, such as one only feels at rare times. Afterwards, when I saw a sea-fight, I saw that just such a spirit filled the sailors, as they loaded and fired the guns.

I pushed my way along the cliffs through the gorse, till I came to the patch where the coast-guards had lain. The grass was trampled and broken, beaten flat in places as though heavy bodies had fallen on it; there were marks of a struggle all over the patch. Some of the near-by gorse twigs were broken from their stems; some one had dropped a small hank of spun-yarn. They had lain there all that night, for the dew was thick upon them. What puzzled me at first was the fact that there were marks from only two pairs of boots, both of the regulation pattern. The men who struggled with the coastguards must have worn moccasins, or heelless leather slippers, made out of some soft hide.

I felt deeply relieved when I saw no bodies, nor any stain upon the grass. I began to wonder what the night-riders had done with the coastguards; and, as I sat wondering, I heard, really and truly, a noise of the people talking from a little way below me, just beyond the brow of the cliff. That told me at once that there was a cave, even as I had suspected. I craned forward eagerly, as near as I dared creep, to the very rim of the land. I looked down over the edge into the sea, and saw the little blue waves creaming into foam far below me.

I could see nothing but the side of the cliff, with its projecting knobs of rock; no opening of any kind, and yet a voice from just below me (it seemed to come from below a little projecting slab a few feet down): a voice just below me, I say, said, quite clearly, evidently between puffs at a pipe, "I don't know so much about that." Another voice answered; but I could not catch the words. The voice I should have known anywhere; it was Marah's "good-temper voice," as he called it, making a pleasant answer.

"That settles it," I said to myself. "There's a cave, and the coastguards are there, I'll be bound, as prisoners. Now I have to find them and set them free."

Very cautiously I peered over the cliff-face, examining every knob and ledge which might conceal (or lead to) an opening in the rock. No. I could see nothing; the cliff seemed to me to be almost sheer; and though it was low tide, the rocks at the base of the cliffs seemed to conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for him at the end of his journey. Again I looked carefully right to the foot of the crag. No. There was absolutely nothing; I was off the track somehow.

Now, just at this point the cliff fell Inland for a few paces, forming a tiny bay about six yards across. To get along the cliff towards Strete I had to turn inland for a few steps, then turn again towards the sea, in order to reach the cliff. I skirted the little bay in this manner, and dropped one or two stones into it from where I stood. As I craned over the edge, watching them fall into the sea, I caught sight of something far below me, in the water.

I caught my breath and looked again, but the thing, whatever it was, had disappeared from sight. It was something red, which had gleamed for a moment from behind a rock at the base of the cliff. I watched eagerly for a moment or two, hearing the sucking of the sea along the stones, and the cry of the seagulls' young in their nests on the ledges. Then, very slowly, as the slack water urged it, I saw the red stem-piece of a rather large boat nosing slowly forward apparently from the cliff-face towards the great rock immediately in front of it. The secret was plain in a moment. Here was a cave with a sea-entrance, and a cave big enough to hide a large, seagoing fisher's boat; a cave, too, so perfectly hidden that it could not possibly be seen from any point except right at the mouth. A coastguard's boat could row within three yards of the entrance and never once suspect its being there, unless, at a very low tide, the sea clucked strangely from somewhere within. Any men entering the little bay in a boat would see only the big rock hiding the face of the cliff. No one would suspect that behind the rock lay a big cave accessible from the sea, at low tide in fair weather. Even in foul weather, good boatmen (and all the night-riders were wonderful fellows in a boat) could have made that cave in safety, for at the mouth of the little bay there was a great rock, which shut it in on the southwest side, so that in our bad southwesterly gales the bay or cove would have been sheltered, though full of the foam spattered from the sheltering crag.

I had found the cave, but my next task was to find an entrance, and that seemed to be no easy matter. I searched every inch of the cliff-face for a foothold, but there was nothing there big enough for anything bigger than a sea-lark. I could never have clambered down the cliff, even had I the necessary nerve, which I certainly had not. The only way down was to shut my eyes and walk over the cliff-edge, and trust to luck at the bottom, and "that was one beyond me"—only Marah Gorsuch would have tried that way. No; there was no way down the cliff-side, that was certain.

Now, somebody—I think it was old Alec Jewler, the ostler at the Tor Cross posting-house—had told me that here and there along the coast, but most of all in Cornwall, near Falmouth, there had once been arsenic mines, now long since worked out. Their shafts, he said, could be followed here and there for some little distance, and every now and again they would broaden out into chambers, in which people sometimes live, even now. It occurred to me that there might be some such shaft-opening among the gorse quite close to me; so I crept away from the cliff-brink, and began to search among the furze, till my skin was full of prickles. Though I searched diligently for an hour or two, I could find no hole big enough to be the mouth of a shaft. I knew that a shaft of the kind might open a hundred yards from where I was searching, and I was therefore well prepared to spend some time in my hunt. And at last, when I was almost tired of looking, I came across a fox or badger earth, not very recent, which seemed, though I could not be certain, to broaden out inside. I lay down and thrust my head down the hole, and that confirmed me. From up the hole there came the reek of strong ship's tobacco. I had stumbled upon one of the cave's air-holes.



CHAPTER VIII

THE CAVE IN THE CLIFF

My heart was thumping on my ribs as I thrust and wriggled my body down the hole. I did not think how I was to get back again; it never once occurred to me that I might stick in the burrow, and die stifled there, like a rat in a trap. My one thought was, "I shall save the coastguards," and that thought nerved me to push on, careless of everything else. It was not at all easy at first, for the earth fell in my ears from the burrow-roof, and there was very little room for my body. Presently, as I had expected, the burrow broadened out—I could kneel erect in it quite easily; and then I found that I could stand up without bumping my head. I was not frightened, I was only very excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco was very strong. I could see hardly anything—only the light from the burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two, and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip, splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For a moment I stood still, not certain which way to go. Then I settled to myself the direction from which I had heard the voices, and turned along the shaft on that side.

When I had walked a few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip, splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel nothing, and then downward on the far side, but could feel nothing; and then I knocked away a scrap of stone from the top of the wall, and it seemed to fall for several seconds before a faint splash told me that it had reached water. The shaft seemed to turn to the right and left at this low wall, and at first I turned to the left, but only for a moment, as I soon saw that the right-hand turning would bring me more quickly to the cliff-face from which I had heard the voices. After I had made my choice, you may be sure that I went on hands and knees, feeling the ground in front of me. I went forward very, very slowly, with the wet mud coming through my knickerbockers, and the cold drops sometimes falling on my neck from the roof. At last I saw a little glimmer of light, and there was a turning to the left; and just beyond the turning there was a chamber in the rock, all lit up by the sun, as clear as clear. There were holes in the cliff-face, one of them a great big hole, and the sun shone through on to the floor of the cave, and I could look out and see the sea, and the seagulls going past after fish, and the clouds drifting up by the horizon. Very cautiously I crept up to the entrance to the chamber, and then into it, so that I could look all round it.

It was not a very large room (I suppose it was fifteen feet square) and it looked rather smaller than it was, because it was heaped almost to the roof in one or two places with boxes and kegs, and the various sea-stores, such as new rope and spare anchors. In one corner of it (in the corner at which I entered it) a flight of worn stone steps led downwards into the bowels of the earth. "Aha!" I thought; "so that's how you reach your harbour!" Then I crept up to one of the piles of boxes and cautiously peeped over.

I looked over cautiously, for as I entered the room I had the eerie feeling which one gets sometimes at night; I felt that there was somebody else in the room. Sure enough there was somebody else—two somebodies—and my heart leaped up in joy to see them. Sitting on the ground, tied by the body to some of the boxes over which I peered, were the two missing coastguards. Their backs were towards me, and their hands and feet were securely bound; but they were unhurt, that was the great thing. One of them was quietly smoking, filling the cave with strong tobacco smoke; the other was asleep, breathing rather heavily. It was evidently a pleasant holiday for the pair of them. No other person was in the room, but I saw that on the far side of the chamber another gallery led on into the cliff to another chamber, and from this chamber came the sound of many voices talking (in a dull quiet way), and the slow droning of the song of a drunken man. I shut my eyes, and lay across the boxes as still as a dead man, trying to summon up enough courage to speak to the coastguard; and all the time the drunkard's song quavered and shook, and died down, and dragged on again, as though it would never end. Afterwards I often heard that song, in all its thirty stanzas; and I have only to repeat a line of it to bring back to myself the scene of the sunny cave, with the bound coastguard smoking, and the smugglers talking and talking just a few paces out of sight.

"And the gale it roar-ed dismally As we went to New Barbary,"

said the singer; and then some one asked a question, and some one struck a light for his pipe, and the singer droned on and on about the bold Captain Glen, and the ship which met with such disaster.

At last I summoned up enough courage to speak. I crawled over the boxes as far as I could, and touched the coastguard. "Sh!" I said, in a low voice, "Don't make a sound. I've come to rescue you."

The man stared violently (I dare say his nerves were in a bad way after his night in the cave), he dropped his pipe with a little clatter on the stones, and turned to stare at me.

"Sh!" I said again. "Don't speak. Don't make a sound."

I crept round the boxes to him, and opened my knife. It was a strong knife, with very sharp blades (Marah used to whet them for me), so that it did not take me long to cut through the "inch-and-a-half-rope," which lashed the poor fellow to the boxes.

"Thankee, master," the man said, as he rose to his feet and stretched himself. "I was getting stiff. Now, let's get out of here. D'ye know the way out?"

"Yes," I said, "I think I do. Oh, don't make a noise; but come this way. This way."

Very quietly we stole out by the gallery by which I had entered. We made no attempt to rouse the sleeping man; he slept too heavily, and we could not afford to run risks. I don't know what the coastguard's feelings were. As for myself, I was pretty nearly fainting with excitement. I could hear my heart go thump, thump, thump; it seemed to be right up in my very throat. As we stepped into the gloom of the gallery, the smugglers behind us burst into the chorus at the end of the song—

"O never more do I intend For to cross the raging main But to live at home most cheerfull-ee, And thus I end my traged-ee."

I felt that if I could get away from that adventure I, too, would live at home most cheerfully until the day of my death. We took advantage of the uproar to step quickly into the darkness of the passage.

Just before we came to the low stone breastwork which had given me such a shock a few minutes before, we heard some one whistling a bar of a tune. The tune was the tune of—

"Oh, my true love's listed, and wears a white cockade."

And to our horror the whistler was coming quickly towards us. In another second we saw him stepping along the gallery, swinging a lantern. He was a big, strong man, evidently familiar with the way.

"Back," said the coastguard in a gasp. "Get back, for your life, and down that staircase."

The man didn't see us; didn't even hear us. He stopped at the stone breastwork, opened his lantern, and lit his pipe at the candle, and then stepped on leisurely towards the chamber. Our right course would have been "to go for him," knock him down, knock the breath out of him, lash his wrists and ankles together, and bolt for the entrance. But the coastguard was rather upset by his adventure, and he let the minute pass by. Had he rushed at the man as soon as he appeared; but, there—it is no use talking. We didn't rush at him, we scuttled back into the chamber, and then down the worn stone steps cut out of the rock, which seemed to lead down and down into the bowels of the earth. As we hurried down, leaping lightly on the tips of our toes, the quaver of the tune came after us, so clearly that I even made a guess at the whistler's identity.

When we had run down the staircase about half-way down to sea-level we found ourselves in a cave as big as the church at Dartmouth. It was fairly light, for the entrance was large, though low, and at low water (as it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings, and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon it; due, I suppose, to the deep water of the channel. I saw all these things afterwards, at leisure; I did not notice them very clearly in that first moment. All that I saw then was a large sea-lugger, lying moored at the cavemouth, some few feet lower down. She was a beautiful model of a boat (I had seen that much in seeing her bow from the top of the cliff), but of course her three masts were unstepped, and she was rather a handful for a man and a boy. We saw her, and made a leap for her together, and both of us landed in her bows at the same instant, just as the man with the lantern, peering down from the top of the stairs, asked us what in the world we were playing at down there.

The coastguard made no answer, for he was busy in the bows; I think he had his knife through the painter in five seconds. Then he snatched up a boat-hook (I took an oar), and we drove her with all our strength along the channel into (or, I should say, towards) the open sea and freedom.

"Hey," cried the man with the lantern, "chuck that! Are you mad?" He took a step or two down the staircase, in order to see better.

"Drive her, oh, drive her, boy!" cried the coastguard.

I thrust with all my force, the coastguard gave a mighty heave, the lugger slid slowly seawards.

"Hey!" yelled the smuggler, clattering upstairs, dropping his lantern down on us. "Hey, Marah, Jewler, Smokewell, Hankin—all of you! They've got away in the boat."

"Now the play begins," said the coastguard. "Another heave, and another—together now!"

We drove the lugger forward again, so that half her length thrust out into the sea. We ran aft to give her a final thrust out, and just at that moment her bow struck upon the rock at the cave mouth: in the excitement of the moment we had not realised that one of us was wanted in the bows to shove her nose clean into the sea. The blow threw us both upon our hands and knees in the stern sheets; it took us half-a-dozen seconds to pick ourselves up, and then I realised that I should have to jump forward and guide the boat clear of all outlying dangers. As I sprang to the bows there came yells from the top of the stairs, where I saw half-a-dozen smugglers coming full tilt towards us.

Some one cried out, "Drop it, drop it, you fool!" Another voice cried, "Fire!" and two or three shots cracked out, making a noise like a cannonade. The coastguard gave a last desperate heave, I shoved the bows clear, and lo! we were actually gliding out. The coastguard's body was outside the cliff in full sunlight, giving a final thrust from the cliff wall. And then I saw Marah leap into the stern sheets as they passed out of the cave; he gave a little thrust to the coastguard, just a gentle thrust—enough to make him lose his balance and topple over.

"That's enough now," he said, with a grim glance at me. "That's enough for one time."

He picked up the coastguard's boat-hook (the man just grinned and looked sheepish; he made no attempt to fight with Marah) and thrust the boat back into the cave with half-a-dozen deft strokes. Another smuggler dropped down into the stern sheets, looked at the coastguard with a grin, and helped to work the lugger back into the cave. A third man threw down a sternfast to secure her; a fourth jumped into the bow and began to put a long splice into the painter which we had cut. We had tried and we had failed; here we were prisoners again, and I felt sick at heart lest those rough smugglers should teach us a lesson for our daring. But Marah just told the coastguard to jump out.

"Out you get," he said, "and don't try that again."

"I won't," said the coastguard.

"You'd better not," said another smuggler. That was all.

We were helped out of the lugger on to the ledge above the channel, and the smugglers walked behind us up the stairs to the room we had just left. The other coastguard was still snoring, and that seemed strange to me, for the last few minutes had seemed like hours.

"Better bring him inside, boss," said one of the smugglers. "He may try the same game."

"He's got no young sprig to cut his lashings," said Marah. "He'll be well enough." So they left the man to his quiet and passed on with their other prisoners into the inner room.



CHAPTER IX

SIGNING ON

The inner room was much larger than the prison chamber; it was not littered with boxes, but clean and open like a frigate's lower deck. It was not, perhaps, quite so light as the other room, but there were great holes in the cliff hidden by bushes from the view of passing fishermen, and the sun streamed through these on to the floor, leaving only the ends of the room in shadow. The room had been arranged like the mess-deck of a war-ship; there were sea-chests and bags ranged trimly round the inner wall; there was a trestle table littered with tin pannikins and plates. The roof was supported by a line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the presence of Captain Sharp himself.

The drunken smuggler who had sung of Captain Glen was the only occupant of the room when we entered: he sat half asleep in his chest, still clutching his pannikin, still muttering about the boatswain. He was an Italian by birth, so Marah told me. He was known as Gateo. When he was sober he was a good seaman, but when he was drunk he would do nothing but sing of Captain Glen until he dropped off to sleep. He had served in the Navy, Marah told me, and had once been a boatswain's mate in the Victory; but he had deserted, and now he was a smuggler living in a hole in the earth.

"And now," said Marah, after he had told me all this, "you and me will have to talk. Step into the other room there, you boys," he cried to the other smugglers: "I want to have a word with master here."

One of the men—he was the big man who had raised the alarm on us; I never knew his real name, everybody always called him Extry—said glumly that he "wasn't going to oblige boys, not for dollars."

Marah turned upon him, and the two men faced each other; the others stood expectantly, eager for a fight. "Step into the other room there," repeated Marah quietly.

"I ain't no pup nor no nigger-man," said Extry. "You ain't going to order me."

Marah seemed to shrink into himself and to begin to sparkle all over—I can't describe it: that is the effect he produced—he seemed to settle down like a cat going to spring. Extry's hand travelled round for his sheath-knife, and yet it moved indecisively, as though half afraid. And then, just as I felt that Extry would die from being looked at in that way, he hung his head, turned to the door, and walked out sheepishly according to order. He was beaten.

"No listening now," said Marah, as they filed out. "Keep on your own side of the fence."

"Shall we take Gatty with us?" said one of the men.

"Let him lie," said Marah; "he's hove down for a full due, Gatty is."

The men disappeared with their prisoner. Marah looked after them for a moment. "Now," he said, "come on over here to the table, Master Jim." He watched me with a strange grin upon his face; I knew that grin; it was the look his face always bore when he was worried. "Now we will come to business. Lie back against the hammocks and rest; I'm going to talk to you like a father."

I lay back upon the lashed-up hammocks and he began.

"I suppose you know what you've done? You've just about busted yourself. D'ye know that? You thought you'd rescue the pugs"—he meant coastguards. "Well, you haven't. You have gone and shoved your head down a wasp's nest, so you'll find. How did you get here, in the first place? What gave you your clue?"

"I saw the coastguards up above here yesterday," I answered, "and I thought I heard voices speaking from below the brow of the cliff, so then I searched about till I found a hole, and so I got down here."

"Ah," said Marah, "they will be round here looking for you, then. I'll take the liberty of hiding your tracks." He went in to the other room and spoke a few words to one of the other smugglers. "Well," he said, as he came back to me, "they'll not find you now, if they search from now till glory. They'll think you fell into the sea."

"But," I exclaimed, "I must go home! Surely I can go home now? They'll be so anxious."

"Yes," said Marah, "they'll be anxious. But look you here, my son; folk who acts hasty, as you've done, they often make other people anxious—often enough. Very anxious indeed, some of 'em. That's what you have done by coming nosing around here. Now here you are, our prisoner—Captain Sharp's prisoner—and here you must stay."

"But, I must go home," I cried, the tears coming to my eyes. "I must go home."

"Well, you just can't," he answered kindly. "Think it over a minute. You've come here," he went on, "nosing round like a spy; you've found out our secret. You might let as many as fifty men in for the gallows—fifty men to be hanged, d'ye understand; or to be transported, or sent to a hulk, or drafted into a man-o'-war. I don't say you would, for I believe you have sense: still, you're only a boy, and they might get at you in all sorts of ways. Cunning lawyers might. And then you give us away and where would we be? Eh, boy? Where would we be? Suppose you gave us away, meaning no harm, not really knowing what you done. Well, I ask you, where would we be?"

"I wouldn't give you away," I said hotly. "You know I wouldn't. I never gave you away about the hut in the woods."

"No," he said, "you never; but this time there's men's necks concerned. I can't help myself—Captain Sharp's, orders. I couldn't let you go if I wanted to; the hands wouldn't let me. It'd be putting so many ropes round their necks." By this time I was crying. "Don't cry, young 'un," he said; "it won't be so bad. But you see yourself what you've done now, don't you?"

He walked away from me a turn or two to let me have my cry out. When my sobs ceased, he came back and sat close to me, waiting for me to speak.

"What will you do to me?" I asked him.

"Why," he answered, "there's only one thing to be done; either you've got to become one of us, so as if you give us away you'll be in the same boat—I don't say you need be one of us for long; only a trip or two—or, you'll have to walk through the window there, and that's a long fall and a mighty wet splash at the bottom."

I thought of Mims waiting at home for me, and of the jolly tea-table, with Hoolie begging for toast and Hugh's face bent over his plate. The thought that I should never see them again set me crying passionately—I cried as if my heart would break.

"Why—come, come," said Marah; "I thought you were a sailor. Take a brace, boy. We're not going to kill you. You'll make a trip or two. What's that? Why it's only a matter of a week or two, and it'll make a man of you. A very jolly holiday. I'll be able to make a man of you just as I said I would. You'll see life and you'll see the sea, and then you'll come home and forget all about us. But go home you'll not, understand that, till we got a hold on you the same as you on us."

There was something in his voice which gave me the fury of despair. I sprang to my feet, almost beside myself. "Very well, then," I cried. "You can drown me. I'm not going to be one of you. And if I ever get away I'll see you all hanged, every one of you—you first."

I couldn't say more, for I burst out crying again.

Marah sat still, watching me. "Well, well," he said, "I always thought you had spirit. Still, no sense in drowning you, no sense at all."

He walked to the door and called out to some of the smugglers, "Here, Extry, Hankin, you fellows, just come in here, I want you a moment."

The men came in quickly, and ranged themselves about the room, grinning cheerfully.

"'Low me to introduce you," said Marah. "Our new apprentice, Mr Jim Davis."

The men bowed to me sheepishly.

"Glad to meet Mr Davis," said one of them.

"Quite a pleasure," said another.

"I s'pose you just volunteered, Mr Jim?" said the third.

"Yes," said Marah; "he just volunteered. I want you to witness his name on the articles." He produced a sheet of paper which was scrawled all over with names. "Now, Mr Jim," he said, "your name, please. There's ink and pen in the chest here."

"What d'ye want my name for?" I asked.

"Signing on," he said, winking at me. It's only a game."

"I won't set my name to the paper." I cried. "I'll have nothing to do with you. I'd sooner die—far sooner."

"That's a pity," said Marah, taking up the pen. "Well, if you won't, you won't."

He bent over the chest and wrote "Jim Davis" in a round, unformed, boyish hand, not unlike my own.

"Now, boys," he said, "you have seen the signature. Witness it, please."

The men witnessed the signature and made their clumsy crosses; none of them could write.

"You see?" asked Marah. "We were bound to get you, Jim. You've signed our articles." "I've done nothing of the kind," I said. "Oh! but you have," he said calmly. "Here's your witnessed signature. You're one of us now."

"It's a forgery!" I cried.

"Forgery?" he said in pretended amazement. "But here are witnesses to swear to it. Now don't take on, son"—he saw that I was on the point of breaking down again at seeing myself thus trapped. "You can't get away. You're ours. Make the best of a bad job. We will tell your friends you are safe. They'll know within an hour that you will not be home till the end of June. After that you will be enough one of us to keep your tongue shut for your own sake. I'm sorry you don't like it. Well, 'The sooner the quicker' is a good proverb. The sooner you dry your tears, the quicker we can begin to work together. Here, Smokewell, get dinner along; it's pretty near two o'clock. Now, Jim, my son, I'll just send a note to your people." He sat down on a chest and began to write. "No," he added; "you had better write. Say this: 'I am safe. I shall be back in three weeks' time. Say I have gone to stay in Somersetshire with Captain Sharp. Do not worry about me. Do not look for me. I am safe.' There; that's enough. Give it here. Hankin, deliver this letter at once to Mrs Cottier, at the Snail's Castle. Don't show your beautiful face to more'n you can help. Be off."

Hankin took the letter and shambled out of the cave. Long afterwards I heard that he shot it through the dining-room window on a dart of hazelwood while my aunt and Mrs Cottier were at lunch. That was the last letter I wrote for many a long day. That was my farewell to boyhood, that letter.

After a time Smokewell brought in dinner, and we all fell-to at the table. For my own part, I was too sick at heart to eat much, though the food was good enough. There was a cold fowl, a ham, and a great apple-pasty.

After dinner, the men cut up tobacco, and played cards, and smoked, and threw dice; but Marah made them do this in the outer room. He was very kind to me in my wretchedness. He slung one of the hammocks for me, and made me turn in for a sleep. After a time I cried myself into a sort of uneasy doze. I woke up from time to time, and whenever I woke up I would see Marah smoking, with his face turned to the window, watching the sea. Then I would hear the flicker of the cards in the next room, and the voices of the players. "You go that? Do you? Well, and I'll raise you." And then I would hear the money being paid to the winners, and wonder where I was, and so doze off again into all manner of dreams.



CHAPTER X

ABOARD THE LUGGER

When I woke up, it was still bright day, but the sun was off the cliffs, and the caves seemed dark and uncanny.

"Well," said Marah, "have you had a good sleep?"

"Yes," I said, full of wretchedness; "I must have slept for hours."

"You'll need a good sleep," said Marah, "for it's likely you'll have none to-night. We night-riders, the like of you and me, why, we know what the owls do, don't we? We sleep like cats in the daytime. They'll be getting supper along in about half-an-hour. What d'you say to a wash and that down in the sea—a plunge in the cove and then out and dry yourself? Why, it'd be half your life. Do you all the good in the world. Can't offer you fresh water; there's next to none down below here. But you come down and have a dip in the salt."

He led the way into the next room, and down the stairs to the water. The tide was pretty full, so that I could dive off one ledge and climb out by the ledge at the other side. So I dived in and then climbed back, and dried myself with a piece of an old sail, feeling wonderfully refreshed. Then we went upstairs to the cave again, and supped off the remains of the dinner; and then the men sat about the table talking, telling each other stories of the sea. It was dusk before we finished supper, and the caves were dark, but no lights were allowed. The smugglers always went into the passages to light their pipes. I don't know how they managed in the winter: probably they lived in the passages, where a fire could not be seen from the sea. In summer they could manage very well.

Towards sunset the sky clouded over, and it began to rain. I sat at the cave window, listlessly looking out upon it, feeling very sick at heart. The talk of the smugglers rang in my ears in little snatches.

"So I said, 'You're a liar. There's no man alive ever came away, not ever. They were all drowned, every man Jack.' That's what I said."

"Yes," said another; "so they was. I saw the wreck myself. The lower masts was standing."

I didn't understand half of what they said; but it all seemed to be full of terrible meaning, like the words heard in dreams. Marah was very kind in his rough sailor's way, but I was homesick, achingly homesick, and his jokes only made me more wretched than I was. At last he told me to turn in again and get some sleep, and, after I had tucked myself up, the men were quieter. I slept in a dazed, light-headed fashion (as I had slept in the afternoon) till some time early in the morning (at about one o'clock), when a hand shook my hammock, and Marah's voice bade me rise.

It was dark in the cave, almost pitch-dark. Marah took my arm and led me downstairs to the lower cave, where one or two battle-lanterns made it somewhat lighter. There were nearly twenty men gathered together in the cave, and I could see that the lugger had been half filled with stores, all securely stowed, ready for the sea. A little, brightly-dressed mannikin, in a white, caped overcoat, was directing matters, talking sometimes in English, sometimes in French, but always with a refined accent and in picked phrases. He was clean shaven, as far as I could see, and his eyes glittered in the lantern-light. The English smugglers addressed him as Captain Sharp, but I learnt afterwards that "Captain Sharp" was the name by which all their officers were known, and that there were at least twenty other Captain Sharps scattered along the coast. At the time, I thought that this man was the supreme head, the man who had sent Mrs Cottier her present, the man who had spoken to me that night of the snow-storm.

"Here, Marah," he said, when he saw that I was taking too much notice of him, "stow that lad away in the bows; he will be recognising me by-and-by."

"Come on, Jim," said Marah; "jump into the boat, my son."

"But where are we going?" I asked, dismayed.

"Going?" he answered. "Going? Going to make a man of you. Going to France, my son,"

I hung back, frightened and wretched. He swung me lightly off the ledge into the lugger's bows.

"Now, come," he said; "you're not going to cry. I'm going to make a man of you. Here, you must put on this suit of wrap-rascal, and these here knee-boots, or you'll be cold to the bone,'specially if you're sick. Put 'em on, son, before we sail." He didn't give me time to think or to refuse, but forced the clothes upon me; they were a world too big. "There," he said; "now you're quite the sailor." He gave a hail to the little dapper man above him. "We're all ready, Captain Sharp," he cried, "so soon as you like."

"Right," said the Captain. "You know what you got to do. Shove off, boys!"

A dozen more smugglers leaped down upon the lugger; the gaskets were cast off the sails, a few ropes were flung clear. I saw one or two men coiling away the lines which had lashed us to the rocks. The dapper man waved his hands and skipped up the staircase.

"Good-bye, Jim," said some one. "So long—so long," cried the smugglers to their friends. Half-a-dozen strong hands walked along the ledge with the sternfast, helping to drag us from the cave. "Quietly now," said Marah, as the lugger moved out into the night. "Heave, oh, heave," said the seamen, as they thrust her forward to the sea. The sea air beat freshly upon me, a drop or two of rain fell, wetting my skin, the water talked under the keel and along the cliff-edge—we were out of the cave, we were at sea; the cave and the cliff were a few yards from us, we were moving out into the unknown.

"Aft with the boy, out of the way," said some one; a hand led me aft to the stern sheets, and there was Marah at the tiller. "Get sail on her," he said in a low voice.

The men ran to the yards and masts, the masts were stepped and the yards hoisted quietly. There was a little rattle of sheets and blocks, the sails slatted once or twice. Then the lugger passed from the last shelter of the cliff; the wind caught us, and made us heel a little; the men went to the weather side; the noise of talking water deepened. Soon the water creamed into brightness as we drove through it. They set the little main topsail—luggers were never very strictly rigged in those days.

"There's the Start Light, Jim," said Marah. "Bid it good-bye. You'll see it no more for a week."

They were very quiet in the lugger; no one spoke, except when the steersman was relieved, or when the master wished something done among the rigging. The men settled down on the weather side with their pipes and quids, and all through the short summer night we lay there, huddled half asleep together, running to the south like a stag. At dawn the wind breezed up, and the lugger leaped and bounded till I felt giddy; but they shortened no sail, only let her drive and stagger, wasting no ounce of the fair wind. The sun came up, the waves sparkled, and the lugger drove on for France, lashing the sea into foam and lying along on her side. I didn't take much notice of things for I felt giddy and stunned; but the change in my circumstances had been so great—the life in the lugger was so new and strange to me—that I really did not feel keen sorrow for being away from my friends. I just felt stunned and crushed.

Marah was at the taffrail looking out over the water with one hand on the rail. He grinned at me whenever the sprays rose up and crashed down upon us. "Ha," he would say, "there she sprays; that beats your shower-baths," and he would laugh to see me duck whenever a very heavy spray flung itself into the boat. We were tearing along at a great pace and there were two men at the tiller: Marah was driving his boat in order to "make a passage." We leaped and shook, and lay down and rushed, like a thing possessed; our sails were dark with the spray; nearly every man on board was wet through.

By-and-by Marah called me to him and took me by the scruff of the neck with one hand. "See here," he said, putting his mouth against my ear; "look just as though nothing was happening. You see that old Gateo at the lee tiller? Well, watch him for a moment. Now look beyond his red cap at the sea. What's that? Your eyes are younger—I use tobacco too much to have good eyes. What's that on the sea there?"

I looked hard whenever the lugger rose up in a swell. "It's a sail," I said, in a low voice; "a small sail. A cutter by the look of her."

"Yes," he said, "she's a cutter. Now turn to windward. What d'ye make of that?"

He jerked himself around to stare to windward and ahead of us. Very far away, I could not say how far, I saw, or thought I saw, several ships; but the sprays drove into my face and the wind blew the tears out of my eyes. "Ships," I answered him. "A lot of ships—a whole convoy of ships."

"Ah," he answered, "that's no convoy. That's the fleet blockading Brest, my son. That cutter's a revenue cruiser, and she's new from home; her bottom's clean, otherwise we'd dropped her. She's going to head us off into the fleet, and then there will be James M'Kenna."

"Who was he?" I asked.

"Who? James M'Kenna?" he answered lightly. "He stole the admiral's pig. He was hanged at the yardarm until he was dead. You thank your stars we have not got far to go. There's France fair to leeward; but that cutter's between us and there, so we shall have a close call to get home. P'raps we shall not get home—it depends, my son."



CHAPTER XI

THE FRIGATE "LAOCOON"

By this time the other smugglers had become alarmed. The longboat gun, which worked on a slide abaft all, was cleared, and the two little cohorns, or hand-swivel guns, which pointed over the sides, were trained and loaded. A man swarmed up the mainmast to look around. "The cutter's bearing up to close," he called out. "I see she's the Salcombe boat."

"That shows they have information," said Marah grimly, "otherwise they'd not be looking for us here. Some one had been talking to his wife." He hailed the masthead again. "Have the frigates seen us yet?"

For answer, the man took a hurried glance to windward, turned visibly white to the lips, and slid down a rope to the deck. "Bearing down fast, under stunsails," he reported. "The cutter's signalled them with her topsail. There's three frigates coming down," he added.

"Right," said Marah. "I'll go up and see for myself."

He went up, and came down again looking very ugly. He evidently thought that he was in a hole. "As she goes," he called to the helmsman, "get all you can on the sheets, boys. Now Jim, you're up a tree; you're within an hour of being pressed into the Navy. How'd ye like to be a ship's boy, hey, and get tickled up by a bo'sun's rope-end?"

"I shouldn't like it at all," I answered.

"You'll like it a jolly sight less than that," said he, "and it's what you'll probably be. We're ten miles from home. The cutter's in the road. The frigates will be on us in half-an-hour. It will be a mighty close call, my son; we shall have to fight to get clear."

At that instant of time something went overhead with a curious whanging whine.

"That's a three-pound ball," said Marah, pointing to a spurt upon a wave. "The cutter wants us to stop and have breakfast with 'em."

"Whang," went another shot, flying far overhead. "Fire away," said Marah. "You're more than a mile away; you will not hit us at that range."

He shifted his course a little, edging more towards the shore, so as to cut transversely across the cutter's bows. We ran for twenty minutes in the course of the frigates; by that time the cutter was within half a mile and the frigates within three miles of us. All the cutter's guns were peppering at us; a shot or two went through our sails, one shot knocked a splinter from our fiferail.

"They shoot a treat, don't they?" said Marah. "Another minute and they will be knocking away a spar."

Just as he spoke, there came another shot from the cutter; something aloft went "crack"; a rope unreeved from its pulley and rattled on to the deck; the mizen came down in a heap: the halliards had been cut clean through. The men leaped to repair the damage; it took but a minute or two, but we had lost way; the next shot took us square amidships and tore off a yard of our lee side.

"We must give them one in return," he said. "Aft to the gun, boys."

The men trained the long gun on the cutter. "Oh, Marah," I said, "don't fire on Englishmen."

"Who began the firing?" he answered. "I'm going to knock away some of their sails. Stand clear of the breech," he shouted, as he pulled the trigger-spring. The gun roared and recoiled; a hole appeared as if by magic in the swelling square foresail of the cutter. "Load with bar-shot and chain," said Marah. "Another like that and we shall rip the whole sail off. Mind your eye. There goes her gun again."

This time the shot struck the sea beside us, sending a spout of water over our rail. Again Marah pulled his trigger-spring, the gun fell over on its side, and the cutter's mast seemed to collapse into itself as though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the foresail in two, and the shot passing on had smashed the foremast just below the cap. All her sails lay in a confused heap just forward of the mast.

"That's done her," said one of the smugglers. "She can't even use her gun now."

"Hooray!" cried another. "We're the boys for a lark."

"Are you?" said Marah. "We got the frigates to clear yet, my son. They'll be in range in two minutes or less. Look at them."

Tearing after us, in chase, under all sail, came the frigates. Their bows were burrowing into white heaps of foam; we could see the red port-lids and the shining gun-muzzles; we could see the scarlet coats of the marines, and the glint of brass on the poops. A flame spurted from the bows of the leader. She was firing a shot over us to bid us heave to. The smugglers looked at each other; they felt that the game was up. Bang! Another shot splashed into the sea beside us, and bounded on from wave to wave, sending up huge splashes at each bound. A third shot came from the second frigate, but this also missed. Marah was leaning over our lee rail, looking at the coast of France, still several miles away. "White water," he cried suddenly. "Here's the Green Stones. We shall do them yet."

I could see no green stones, but a quarter of a mile away, on our port-hand, the sea was all a cream of foam above reefs and sands just covered by the tide. If they were to help us, it was none too soon, for by this time the leading frigate was only a hundred yards from us. Her vast masts towered over us. I could look into her open bow ports; I could see the men at the bow guns waiting for the word to fire. I have often seen ships since then, but I never saw any ship so splendid and so terrible as that one. She was the Laocoon, and her figurehead was twined with serpents. The line of her ports was of a dull yellow colour, and as all her ports were open, the port-lids made scarlet marks all along it. Her great lower studdingsail swept out from her side for all the world like a butterfly-net, raking the top of the sea for us. An officer stood on the forecastle with a speaking-trumpet in his hand.

"Stand by!" cried Marah. "They're going to hail us."

"Ahoy, the lugger there!" yelled the officer. "Heave to at once or I sink you. Heave to."

"Answer him in French," said Marah to one of the men.

A man made some answer in French; I think he said he didn't understand. The officer told a marine to fire at us. The bullet whipped through the mizen. "Bang" went one of the main-deck guns just over our heads. We felt a rush and shock, and our mizen mast and sail went over the side.

Marah stood up and raised his hand. "We surrender, sir!" he shouted; "we surrender! Down helm, boys."

We swung round on our keel, and came to the wind. We saw the officer nod approval and speak a word to the sailing-master, and then the great ship lashed past us, a mighty, straining, heaving fabric of beauty, whose lower studding-sails were wet half-way to their irons.

"Now for it!" said Marah. He hauled his wind, and the lugger shot off towards the broken water. "If we get among those shoals," he said, "we're safe as houses. The frigate's done. She's going at such a pace they will never stop her. Not till she's gone a mile. Not without they rip the masts out of her. That officer ought to have known that trick. That will be a lesson to you, Mr Jim. If ever you're in a little ship, and you get chased by a big ship, you keep on till she's right on top of you, and then luff hard all you know, and the chances are you'll get a mile start before they come round to go after you."

We had, in fact, doubled like a hare, and the frigate, like a greyhound, had torn on ahead, unable to turn. We saw her lower stunsail boom carry away as they took in the sail, and we could see her seamen running to their quarters ready to brace the yards and bring the ship to her new course. The lugger soon gathered way and tore on, but it was now blowing very fresh indeed, and the sea before us was one lashing smother of breakers. Marah seemed to think nothing of that; he was watching the frigates. One, a slower sailer than the other, was sailing back to the fleet; the second had hove to about a mile away, with her longboat lowered to pursue us. The boat was just clear of her shadow; crowding all sail in order to get to us. The third ship, the ship which we had tricked, was hauling to the wind, with her light canvas clued up for furling. In a few moments she was braced up and standing towards us, but distant about a mile.

Suddenly both frigates opened fire, and the great cannon-balls ripped up the sea all round us.

"They'll sink us, sure," said one of the smugglers with a grin.

The men all laughed, and I laughed too; we were all so very much interested in what was going to happen. The guns fired steadily one after the other in a long rolling roar. The men laughed at each shot.

"They couldn't hit the sea," they said derisively. "The navy gunners are no use at all."

"No," said Marah, "they're not. But if they keep their course another half-minute they'll be on the sunk reef, and a lot of 'em'll be drowned. I wonder will the old Laocoon take a hint."

"Give 'em the pennant," said Gateo.

"Ay, give it 'em," said half-a-dozen others. "Don't let 'em wreck."

Marah opened the flag-locker, and took out a blue pennant (it had a white ball in the middle of it), which he hoisted to his main truck. "Let her go off," he cried to the helmsman.

For just a moment we lay broadside on to the frigate, a fair target for her guns, so that she could see the pennant blowing out clear.

"You see, Jim?" asked Marah. "That pennant means 'You are standing in to danger.' Now we will luff again."

"I don't think they saw it, guv'nor," said one of the sailors as another shot flew over us. "They'll have to send below to get their glasses, those blind navy jokers."

"Off," said Marah, quickly; and again we lay broadside on, tumbling in the swell, shipping heavy sprays.

This time they saw it, for the Laocoon's helm was put down, her great sails shivered and threshed, and she stood off on the other tack. As she stood away we saw an officer leap on to the taffrail, holding on by the mizen backstays. "Tar my wig," said Marah, "if he isn't bowing to us!"

Sure enough the officer took off his hat to us and bowed gracefully.

"Polite young man," said Marah. "We will give them the other pennant." Another flag, a red pennant, was hoisted in place of the blue. "Wishing you a pleasant voyage," said Marah. "Now luff, my sons. That longboat will be on to us."

Indeed, the longboat had crept to within six hundred yards of us; it was time we were moving, though the guns were no longer firing on us from the ships.

"Mind your helm, boys," said Marah as he went forward to the bows. "I've got to con you through a lot of bad rocks. You'll have to steer small or die."



CHAPTER XII

BLACK POOL BAY

I shall not describe our passage through the Green Stones to Kermorvan, but in nightmares it comes back to me. We seemed to wander in blind avenues, hedged in by seas, and broken water, awful with the menace of death. For five or six hours we dodged among rocks and reefs, wet with the spray that broke upon them and sick at heart at the sight of the whirlpools and eddies. I think that they are called the Green Stones because the seas break over them in bright green heaps. Here and there among them the tide seized us and swept us along, and in the races where this happened there were sucking whirlpools, strong enough to twist us round. How often we were near our deaths I cannot think, but time and time again the backwash of a breaker came over our rail in a green mass. When we sailed into Kermorvan I was only half conscious from the cold and wet. I just remember some one helping me up some steps with seaweed on them.

We stayed in Kermorvan for a week or more, waiting for our cargo of brandy, silk, and tobacco, and for letters and papers addressed to the French war-prisoners in the huge prison on Dartmoor.

I was very unhappy in Kermorvan, thinking of home. It would have been less dismal had I had more to do, but I was unoccupied and a prisoner, in charge of an old French woman, who spoke little English, so that time passed slowly indeed. At last we set sail up the coast, hugging the French shore, touching at little ports for more cargo till we came to Cartaret. Here a French gentleman (he was a military spy) came aboard us, and then we waited two or three days for a fair wind. At last the wind drew to the east, and we spread all sail for home on a wild morning when the fishermen were unable to keep the sea.

At dusk we were so near to home that I could see the Start and the whole well-known coast from Salcombe to Dartmoor. In fact I had plenty of time to see it, for we doused our sails several miles out to sea, and lay tossing in the storm to a sea-anchor, waiting for the short summer night to fall. When it grew dark enough (of course, in that time of year, it is never very dark even in a storm) we stole in, mile by mile, to somewhere off Flushing, where we showed a light. We showed it three times from the bow, and at the last showing a red light gleamed from Flushing Church. That was the signal to tell us that all was safe, so then we sailed into Black Pool Bay, where the breakers were beating fiercely in trampling ranks.

There were about a dozen men gathered together on the beach. We sailed right in, till we were within ten yards of the sands, and there we moored the lugger by the head and stern, so that her freight could be discharged. The men on the beach waded out through the surf (though it took them up to the armpits), and the men in the lugger passed the kegs and boxes to them. Waves which were unusually big would knock down the men in the water, burden and all, and then there would be laughter from all hands, and grumbles from the victim. I never saw men work harder. The freight was all flung out and landed and packed in half an hour. It passed out in a continual stream from both sides of the boat; everybody working like a person possessed. And when the lugger was nearly free of cargo, and the string of workers in the water was broken on the port side, it occurred to me that I had a chance of escape. It flashed into my mind that it was dark, that no one in the lugger was watching me, that the set of the tide would drive me ashore (I was not a good swimmer, but I knew that in five yards I should be able to touch bottom), and that in another two hours, or less, I should be in bed at home, with all my troubles at an end.

When I thought of escaping, I was standing alone at the stern. A lot of the boat's crew were in the water, going ashore to "run" the cargo, on horseback, to the wilds of Dartmoor. The others were crowded at the bow, watching them go, or watching the men upon the beach, moving here and there by torchlight, packing the kegs on the horses' backs. It was a wild scene. The wind blew the torches into great red fiery banners; the waves hissed and spumed, and glimmered into brightness; you could see the horses shying, and the men hurrying to and fro; and now and then some one would cry out, and then a horse would whinny. All the time there was a good deal of unnecessary talk and babble; the voices and laughter of the seamen came in bursts as the wind lulled. Every now and then a wave would burst with a smashing noise, and the smugglers would laugh at those wetted by the spray. I saw that I had a better chance of landing unobserved on the port side; so I stole to that side, crawled over the gunwale, and slid into the sea without a splash.

The water made me gasp at first; but that only lasted a second. I made a gentle stroke or two towards the shore, trying not to raise my head much, and really I felt quite safe before I had made three strokes. When you swim in the sea at night, you see so little that you feel that you, in your turn, cannot be seen either. All that I could see was a confused mass of shore with torchlights. Every now and then that would be hidden from me by the comb of a wave; and then a following wave would souse into my face and go clean over me; but as my one thought was to be hidden from the lugger, I rather welcomed a buffet of that sort. I very soon touched bottom, for the water near the beach is shallow. I stood up and bent over, so as not to be seen, and began to stumble towards the shelter of the rocks. The business of lading the horses was going steadily forward, with the same noisy hurry. I climbed out of the backwash of the last breaker, and dipped down behind a rock, high and dry on the sands. I was safe, I thought, safe at last, and I was too glad at heart to think of my sopping clothes, and of the cold which already made me shiver like an aspen. Suddenly, from up the hill, not more than a hundred yards from me, came the "Hoo-hoo" of an owl, the smuggler's danger signal. The noise upon the beach ceased at once; the torches plunged into the sand and went out: I heard the lugger's crew cut their cables and hoist sail.

A voice said, "Carry on, boys. The preventives are safe at Bolt Tail," and at that the noise broke out as before.

Some one cried "Sh," and "Still," and in the silence which followed, the "Hoo-hoo" of the owl called again, with a little flourishing note at the end of the call.

A man cried out, "Mount and scatter."

Some one else cried, "Where's Marah?" and as I lay crouched, some one bent over me and touched me.

"Sorry, Jim," said Marah's voice. "I knew you'd try it. You only got your clothes wet. Come on, now."

"Hoo-hoo" went the owl again, and at this, the third summons, we distinctly heard many horses' hoofs coming at a gallop towards us, though at a considerable distance.

"Marah! Come on, man!" cried several voices.

"Come on," said Marah, dragging me to the horses. "Off, boys," he called. "Scatter as you ride," Many horses moved off at a smart trot up the hill to Stoke Fleming. Their horses' feet were muffled with felt, so that they made little noise, although they were many.

Marah swung me up into the saddle of one of the three horses in his care. He himself rode the middle horse. I was on his off side. The horse I mounted had a keg of spirits lashed to the saddle behind me; the horse beyond Marah was laden like a pack-mule.

"We're the rearguard," said Marah to me. "We must bring them clear off. Ride, boys—Strete road," he called; and the smugglers of the rearguard clattered off by the back road, or broken disused lane, which leads to Allington. Still Marah waited, the only smuggler now left on the beach. The preventive officers were clattering down the hill to us, less than a quarter of a mile away. "It's the preventives right enough," he said, as a gust of wind brought the clatter of sabres to us, above the clatter of the hoofs. "We're in for a run to-night. Some one's been blabbing. I think I know who. Well, I pity him. That's what. I pity him. Here, boy. You ought not to ha' tried to cut. You'll be half frozen with the wet. Drink some of this."

He handed me a flask, and forced me to take a gulp of something hot; it made me gasp, but it certainly warmed me, and gave me heart after my disappointment. I was too cold and too broken with misery to be frightened of the preventives. I only prayed that they might catch me and take me home.

We moved slowly to the meeting of the roads, and there Marah halted for a moment. Our horses stamped, and then whinnied. A horse on the road above us whinnied.

One of the clattering troop cried, "There they are. We have them. Come along, boys."

Some one—I knew the voice—it was Captain Barmoor, of the Yeomanry—cried out, "Stand and surrender." And then I saw the sabres gleam under the trees, and heard the horses' hoofs grow furious upon the stones. Marah stood up in his stirrups, and put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled a long, wailing, shrill whistle. Then he kicked his horses and we started, at a rattling pace, up the wretched twisting lane which led to Allington.

Now, the preventives, coming downhill at a tearing gallop, could not take the sharp turn of the lane without pulling up; they got mixed in some confusion at the turning, and a horse and rider went into the ditch. We were up the steep rise, and stretching out at full tilt for safety, before they had cleared the corner. Our horses were fresh; theirs had trotted hard for some miles under heavy men, so that at the first sight the advantage lay with us; but their horses were better than ours, and in better trim for a gallop. Marah checked the three horses, and let them take it easy, till we turned into the well-remembered high road which leads from Strete to my home. Here, on the level, he urged them on, and the pursuit swept after us; and here in the open, I felt for the first time the excitement of the hunt. I wanted to be caught; I kept praying that my horse would come down, or that the preventives would catch us; and at the same time the hurry of our rush through the night set my blood leaping, made me cry aloud as we galloped, made me call to the horses to gallop faster. There was nothing on the road; no one was travelling; we had the highway to ourselves. Near the farm at the bend we saw men by the roadside, and an owl called to us from among them, with that little flourish at the end of the call which I had heard once before that evening. We dashed past them; but as Marah passed, he cried out, "Yes. Be quick." And behind us, as we sped along, we heard something dragged across the road. The crossways lay just beyond.

To my surprise, Marah never hesitated. He did not take the Allington road, but spurred uphill towards the "Snail's Castle," and the road to Kingsbridge. As we galloped, we heard a crash behind us, and the cry of a hurt horse, and the clatter of a sword upon the road. Then more cries sounded; we could hear our pursuers pulling up.

"They're into a tree-trunk," said Marah. "Some friends put a tree across, and one of them's gone into it. We shall probably lose them now," he added. "They will go on for Allington. Still, we mustn't wait yet."

Indeed, the delay was only momentary. The noise of the horses soon re-commenced behind us; and though they paused at the cross-roads, it was only for a few seconds. Some of the troopers took the Allington road. Another party took the road which we had taken; and a third party stopped (I believe) to beat the farm buildings for the men who had laid the tree in the road.

We did not stop to see what they were doing, you may be sure; for when Marah saw that his trick had not shaken them off, he began to hurry his horses, and we were soon slipping and sliding down the steep zigzag road which leads past "Snail's Castle." I had some half-formed notion of flinging myself off my horse as we passed the door, or of checking the horse I rode, and shouting for help. For there, beyond the corner, was the house where I had been so happy, and the light from the window lying in a yellow patch across the road; and there was Hoolie's bark to welcome us. Perhaps if I had not been wet and cold I might have made an attempt to get away; and I knew the preventives were too close to us for Marah to have lingered, had I done so.

But you must remember that we were riding very fast, that I was very young, and very much afraid of Marah, and that the cold and the fear of the preventives (for in a way I was horribly frightened by them) had numbed my brain.

"Don't you try it," said Marah, grimly, as we came within sight of the house. "Don't you try it." He snatched my rein, bending forward on his horse's neck, calling a wild, queer cry. It was one of the gipsy horse-calls, and at the sound of it the horses seemed to lose their wits, for they dashed forward past the house, as though they were running away. It was as much as I could do to keep in the saddle. What made it so bitter to me was the opening of the window behind me. At the sound of the cry, and of those charging horses, some one—some one whom I knew so well, and loved so—ran to the window to look out. I heard the latch rattling and the jarring of the thrown-back sash, and I knew that some one—I would have given the world to have known who—looked out, and saw us as we swept round the corner and away downhill.



CHAPTER XIII

IN THE VALLEY

We turned down the valley, along the coast-track, splashing through the little stream that makes it so boggy by the gate, and soon we were on the coach-road galloping along the straight two miles towards Tor Cross.

Our horses were beginning to give way, for we had done four miles at good speed, and now the preventives began to gain upon us. Looking back as we galloped we could see them on the straight road, about two hundred yards away. Every time we looked back they seemed to be nearer, and at last Marah leant across and told me to keep low in my saddle, as he thought they were going to fire on us. A carbine shot cracked behind us, and I heard the "zip" of the bullet over me.

A man ran out suddenly from one of the furze-bushes by the road, and a voice cried, "Stop them, boys!" The road seemed suddenly full of people, who snatched at our reins, and hit us with sticks. I got a shrewd blow over the knee, and I heard Marah say something as he sent one man spinning to the ground. "Crack, crack!" went the carbines behind us. Some one had hold of my horse's reins, shouting, "I've got you, anyway!" Then Marah fired a pistol—it all happened in a second—the bullet missed, but the flash scorched my horse's nose; the horse reared, and knocked the man down, and then we were clear, and rattling along to Tor Cross.

Looking back, we saw one or two men getting up from the road, and then half-a-dozen guns and pistols flashed, and Marah's horse screamed and staggered. There was a quarter of a mile to go to Tor Cross, and that quarter-mile was done at such a speed as I have never seen since. Marah's horse took the bit in his teeth, and something of his terror was in our horses too.

In a moment, as it seemed, we were past the houses, and over the rocks by the brook-mouth; and there, with a groan, Marah's horse came down. Marah was evidently expecting it, for he had hold of my rein at the time, and as his horse fell he cleared the body. "Get down, Jim," he said. "We're done. The horses are cooked. They have had six miles; another mile would kill them. Poor beast's heart's burst. Down with you." He lifted me off the saddle, and lashed the two living horses over the quarters with a strip of seaweed. He patted the dead horse, with a "Poor boy," and dragged me down behind one of the black rocks, which crop up there above the shingle.

The two horses bolted off along the strand, scattering the pebbles, and then, while the clash of their hoofs was still loud upon the stones, the preventives came pounding up, their horses all badly blown and much distressed. Their leader was Captain Barmoor. I knew him by his voice.

"Here's a dead horse!" he cried. "Sergeant, we have one of their horses. Get down and see if there's any contraband upon him. After them, you others. We shall get them now. Ride on, I tell you! What are you pulling up for?"

The other preventives crashed on over the shingle. Captain Barmoor and the sergeant remained by the dead horse. Marah and I lay close under the rock, hardly daring to breathe, and wondering very much whether we made any visible mark to the tall man on his horse. Shots rang out from the preventives' carbines, and the gallopers made a great clash upon the stones. We heard the sergeant's saddle creak, only a few yards away, and then his boots crunched on the beach as he walked up to the dead horse.

"No. There be no tubs here, sir," he said, after a short examination. "Her be dead enough. Stone dead, sir. There's an empty pistol-case, master."

"Oh," said Captain Barmoor. "Any saddlebag, or anything of that kind?"

The man fumbled about in the gear. "No, there was nothing of that kind—nothing at all."

"Bring on the saddle," said the captain. "There may be papers stitched in it." We heard the sergeant unbuckling the girth. "By the way," said the captain, "you're sure the third horse was led?"

"Yes," said the sergeant. "Two and a led horse there was, sir."

"H'm," said the captain. "I wonder if they have dismounted. They might have. Look about among the rocks there."

I saw Marah's right hand raise his horse-pistol, as the sergeant stepped nearer. In another moment he must have seen us. If he had even looked down, he could not have failed to see us: but he stood within six feet of us, looking all round him—looking anywhere but at his feet. Then he walked away from us, and looked at the rocks near the brook.

"D'ye see them?" snapped the captain.

"No, sir. Nothin' of 'em. They ben't about here, sir. I think they've ridden on. Shall I look in the furze there, sir, afore we go?"

"No," said the captain. "Well, yes. Just take a squint through it."

But as the sergeant waddled uneasily in his sea-boots across the shingle, the carbines of the preventives cracked out in a volley about a quarter of a mile away. A shot or two followed the volley.

"A shotgun that last, sir," said the sergeant.

"Yes," said the captain. "Come along. There's another. Come, mount, man. They're engaged."

We heard the sergeant's horse squirming about as the sergeant tried to mount, and then the two galloped off. Voices sounded close beside us, and feet moved upon the sand. "Still!" growled Marah in my ear. Some one cried out, "Further on. They're fighting further on. Hurry up, and we shall see it."

About a dozen Tor Cross men were hurrying up, in the chance of seeing a skirmish. The wife of one of them—old Mrs. Rivers—followed after them, calling to her man to come back. "I'll give it to 'ee, if 'ee don't come back. Come back, I tell 'ee." They passed on rapidly, pursued by the angry woman, while more shots banged and cracked further and further along the shore.

We waited till they passed out of hearing, and then Marah got up. "Come on, son," he said. "We must be going. Lucky your teeth didn't chatter, or they'd have heard us."

"I wish they had heard us," I cried, hotly. "Then I'd have gone home to-night. Let me go, Marah. Let me go home."

"Next trip, Jim," he said kindly. "Not this. I want you to learn about life. You will get mewed up with them ladies else, and then you will never do anything."

"Ah," I said. "But if you don't let me go I'll scream. Now then. I'll scream."

"Scream away, son," said Marah, calmly. "There's not many to hear you. But you'll not get home after what you have seen to-night. Come on, now."

He took me by the collar, and walked me swiftly to a little cove, where one or two of the Tor Cross fishers kept their boats. I heard a gun or two away in the distance, and then a great clatter of shingle, as the coastguards' horses trotted back towards us, with the led horse between two of them, as the prize of the night. They did not hear us, and could not see us, and Marah took good care not to let me cry out to them. He just turned my face up to his, and muttered, "You just try it. You try it, son, and I'll hold you in the sea till you choke."

The wind was blowing from the direction of the coastguards towards us, and even if I had cried out, perhaps, they would never have heard me. You may think me a great coward to have given in in this way; but few boys of my age would have made much outcry against a man like Marah. He made the heart die within you; and to me, cold and wet from my ducking, terrified of capture in spite of my innocence (for I was not at all sure that the smugglers would not swear that I had joined them, and had helped them in their fights and escapades), the outlook seemed so hopeless and full of misery that I could do nothing. My one little moment of mutiny was gone, my one little opportunity was lost. Had I made a dash for it—But it is useless to think in that way.

Marah got into the one boat which floated in the little artificial creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house, there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then, shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the cave by Black Pool.

We had not gone far (certainly not fifty yards), when we saw the horses of the coastguards galloping down to the sea, one of the horses shying at the whiteness of the breaking water.

A voice hailed us. "Boat ahoy!" it shouted; "what are you doing in the boat there?"

And then all the horsemen drew up in a clump among the rocks.

"Us be drifting, master," shouted Marah, speaking in the broad dialect of the Devon men; "us be drifting."

"Come in till I have a look at you," cried the voice again. "Row in to the rocks here."

"Us a-got no o-ars," shouted Marah, letting the boat slip on. "Lie down, son," he said; "they will fire in another minute."

Indeed, we heard the ramrods in the carbines and the loud click of the gun-cocks.

"Boat ahoy!" cried the voice again. "Row in at once! D'ye hear? Row in at once, or I shall fire on you."

Marah did not answer.

"Present arms!" cried the voice again after a pause; and at that Marah bowed down in the stern sheets under the gunwale.

"Fire!" said the voice; and a volley ripped up the sea all round us, knocking off splinters from the plank and flattening out against the transom.

"Keep down, Jim; you're all right," said Marah. "We will be out of range in another minute."

Bang! came a second volley, and then single guns cracked and banged at intervals as we drew away.

For the next half-hour we were just within extreme range of the carbines and musketoons. During that half-hour we were slowly slipping by the long two miles of Slapton sands. We could not go fast, for our only sail was a coat, and, though the wind was pretty fresh, the set of the tide was against us. So for half an hour we crouched below that rowboat's gunwale, just peeping up now and then to see the white line of the breakers on the sand, and beyond that the black outlines of the horsemen, who slowly followed us, firing steadily, but with no very clear view of what they fired at. I thought that the two miles would never end. Sometimes the guns would stop for a minute, and I would think, "Ah! now we are out of range," or, "Now they have given us up." And then, in another second, another volley would rattle at us, and perhaps a bullet would go whining overhead, or a heavy chewed slug would come "plob" into the boat's side within six inches of me.

Marah didn't seem to mind their firing. He was too pleased at having led the preventives away from the main body of the night-riders to mind a few bullets. "Ah, Jim," he said, "there's three thousand pounds in lace, brandy, and tobacco gone to Dartmoor this night. And all them redcoat fellers got was a dead horse and a horse with a water-breaker on him. And the dead horse was their own, and the one they took. I stole 'em out of the barrack stables myself."

"But horse-stealing is a capital offence," I cried. "They could hang you."

"Yes," he said; "so they would if they could." Bang! came another volley of bullets all round us. "They'd shoot us, too, if they could, so far as that goes; but so far, they haven't been able. Never cross any rivers till you come to the water, Jim. Let that be a lesson to you."

I have often thought of it since as sound advice, and I have always tried to act upon it; but at the time it didn't give much comfort.

At the end of half an hour we were clear of Slapton sands, and coming near to Strete, and here even Marah began to be uneasy. He was watching the horsemen on the beach very narrowly, for as soon as they had passed the Lea they had stopped firing on us, and had gone at a gallop to the beach boathouse to get out a boat."

"What are they doing, Marah?" I asked.

"Getting out a boat to come after us," he answered. "Silly fools! If they'd done that at once they'd have got us. They may do it now. There goes the boat."

We heard the cries of the men as the boat ground over the shingle. Then we heard shouts and cries, and saw a light in the boathouse.

"Looking for oars and sails," said Marah, "and there are none. Good, there are none."

Happily for us, there were none. But we heard a couple of horses go clattering up the road to O'Farrell's cottage to get them.

"We shall get away now," said Marah.

In a few minutes we were out of sight of the beach. Then one of the strange coast currents caught us, and swept us along finely for a few minutes. Soon our boat was in the cave, snugly lashed to the ring-bolts, and Marah had lifted me up the stairs to the room where a few smugglers lay in their hammocks, sleeping heavily. Marah made me drink something and eat some pigeon pie; and then, stripping my clothes from me, he rubbed me down with a blanket, wrapped me in a pile of blankets, and laid me to sleep in a corner on an old sail.



CHAPTER XIV

A TRAITOR

The next day, when I woke, a number of smugglers had come back from their ride. They were sitting about the cave, in their muddy clothes, in high good spirits. They had been chased by a few preventives as far as Allington, and there they had had a brisk skirmish with the Allington police, roused by the preventives' carbine fire. They had beaten off their opponents, and had reached Dartmoor in safety.

"Yes," said Marah; "all very well. But we have been blabbed on. We had the cutter on us on our way out, and here we were surprised coming home. It was the Salcombe cutter chased us, and it was the Salcombe boys gave the preventives the tip last night. Otherwise they'd have been in Salcombe all last night, watching Bolt Tail, no less. 'Stead of that, they came lumbering here, and jolly near nabbed us. Now, it's one of us. There's no one outside knows anything: and only half-a-dozen in Salcombe knew our plans. Salcombe district supplies North Devon; we supply to the east more. Who could it be, boys?"

Some said one thing, some another. And then a man suggested "the parson"; and when he said that it flashed across my mind that he meant Mr Cottier, for I knew that sailors always called a schoolmaster a parson, and I remembered how Mrs Cottier had heard his voice among the night-riders on the night of the snow-storm just before Christmas.

"No; it couldn't be the parson," said some one. "No one trusts the parson."

"I don't know as it couldn't be," said the man whom they called Hankie. "He is a proper cunning one to pry out."

"Ah!" said another smuggler. "And, come to think of it, we passed him the afternoon afore we sailed. I was driving with the Captain. I was driving the Captain here from Kingsbridge."

"He knows the Captain," said Marah grimly. "He might have guessed—seeing him with you—that you were coming to arrange a run. Now, how would he know where we were bound?"

"Guessed it," said Hankie. "He's been on a run or two with the Salcombe fellers. Besides, he couldn't be far out"

"No," said Marah, musingly; "he couldn't. And a hint would have been enough to send the cutter after us."

"But how did he put them on us last night?" said another smuggler. "We had drawed them out proper to Bolt Tail to look for a cargo there. Properly we had drawed them. Us had a boat and all, showing lights."

"Well, if it was the parson who done it, he'd easily find a way," said Marah. "We had better go over and see about it"

Before they went they left me in charge of the old Italian man, who taught me how to point a rope, which is one of the prettiest kinds of plaiting ever invented. The day passed slowly—oh! so slowly; for a day like that, so near home, yet so far away, and with so much misery in prospect, was agonising. I wondered what they would do to Mr Cottier; I wondered if ever I should get home again; I wondered whether the coastguards would have sufficient sense to arrest Marah if they saw him on the roads. In wondering like this, the day slowly dragged to an end; and at the end of the day, just before a watery sunset, Marah and the others returned, leading Mr Cottier as their prisoner.

It shows you what power the night-riders had in those days. They had gone to Salcombe to Mr Cottier's lodgings; they had questioned him, perhaps with threats, till he had confessed that he had betrayed them to the preventives; then they had gagged him, hustled him downstairs to a waiting closed carriage, and then they had quietly driven him on, undisturbed, to their fastness in the cliff. It was sad to see a man fallen so low, a man who had been at the University, and master of a school. It was sad to see him, his flabby face all fallen in and white from excess of fear, and to see his eyes lolling about from one to another man, trying to find a little hope in the look of the faces in the fast-darkening cave.

"Well," he said surlily at last; "you have got me. What are you going to do to me?"

"What d'ye think you deserve?" said Marah. "Eh? You'd have had us all hanged and glad, too. You'll see soon enough what we're going to do to you." He struck a light for his pipe, and lit a candle in a corner of the cave near where I lay. "You'll soon know your fate," he added. "Meanwhile, here's a friend of yours one—you might like to talk to. You'll not get another chance."

At this the man grovelled on the cave floor, crying out to them to let him live, that he would give them all his money, and so on.

"Get up," said Marah; "get up. Try and act like a man, even if you aren't one."

The man went on wailing, "What are you going to do to me?—what are you going to do to me?"

"Spike your guns," said Marah, curtly. "There's your friend in the corner. Talk to him."

He left us together in the cave; an armed smuggler sat at the cave entrance, turning his quid meditatively.

"Mr Cottier," I said, "do you remember Jim—Jim Davis?"

"Jim!" cried Mr Cottier; "Jim, how did you come here?"

"By accident," I said; "and now I'm a prisoner here, like you."

"Oh, Jim," he cried, "what are they going to do to me? You must have heard them. What are they going to do to me? Will they kill me, Jim?"

I thought of the two coastguards snugly shut up in France, in one of the inns near Brest, living at free-quarters, till the smugglers thought they could be sure of them. When I thought of those two men I felt that the traitor would not be killed; and yet I was not sure. I believe they would have killed him if I had not been there. They were a very rough lot, living rough lives, and a traitor put them all in peril of the gallows. Smugglers were not merciful to traitors (it is said that they once tied a traitor to a post at low-water mark, and let the tide drown him), and Marah's words made me feel that Mr Cottier would suffer some punishment: not death, perhaps, but something terrible.

I tried to reassure the man, but I could say very little. And I was angry with him, for he never asked after his wife, nor after Hugh, his son: and he asked me nothing of my prospects. The thought of his possible death by violence within the next few hours kept him from all thought of other people. Do not blame him. We who have not been tried do not know how we should behave in similar circumstances.

By-and-by the men came back to us. We were led downstairs, and put aboard the lugger. Then the boat pushed off silently, sail was hoisted, and a course was set down channel, under a press of canvas. Mr Cottier cheered up when we had passed out of the sight of the lights of the shore, for he knew then that his life was to be spared. His natural bullying vein came back to him. He sang and joked, and even threatened his captors. So all that night we sailed, and all the next day and night—a wild two or three days' sailing, with spray flying over us, and no really dry or warm place to sleep in, save a little half-deck which they rigged in the bows.

I should have been very miserable had not Marah made me work with the men, hauling the ropes, swabbing down the decks, scrubbing the paintwork, and even bearing a hand at the tiller. The work kept me from thinking. The watches (four hours on, four hours off), which I had to keep like the other men, made the time pass rapidly; for the days slid into each other, and the nights, broken into as they were by the night-watches, seemed all too short for a sleepy head like mine.

Towards the end of the passage, when the weather had grown brighter and hotter, I began to wonder how much further we were going. Then, one morning, I woke up to find the lugger at anchor in one of the ports of Northern Spain, with dawn just breaking over the olive-trees, and one or two large, queer-looking, lateen-rigged boats, xebecs from Africa, lying close to us. One of them was flying a red flag, and I noticed that our own boat was alongside of her. I thought nothing of it, but drew a little water from the scuttle-butt, and washed my face and hands in one of the buckets. One or two of the men were talking at my side.

"Ah!" said one of them, "that's nine he did that way—nine, counting him."

"A good job, too," said another man. "It's us or them. I'd rather it was them."

"Yes," said another fellow; "and I guess they repent."

The others laughed a harsh laugh, turning to the African boat with curious faces, to watch our boat pulling back, with Marah at her steering oar.

I noticed, at breakfast (which we all ate together on the deck), that Mr Cottier was no longer aboard the lugger. I had some queer misgivings, but said nothing till afterwards, when I found Marah alone.

"Marah," I said, "where is Mr Cottier? What have you done to him?"

He grinned at me grimly, as though he were going to refuse to tell me. Then he beckoned me to the side of the boat. "Here," he said, pointing to the lateen-rigged xebec; "you see that felucca-boat?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, then," Marah continued, "he's aboard her—down in her hold: tied somewhere on the ballast. That's where Mr Cottier is. Now you want to know what we have done to him? Hey? Well, we've enlisted him in the Spanish Navy. That felucca-boat is what they call a tender. They carry recruits to the Navy in them boats. He will be in a Spanish man-of-war by this time next week. They give him twenty dollars to buy a uniform. He's about ripe for the Spanish Navy."

"But, Marah," I cried, "he may have to fight against our ships."

"All the better for us," he answered. "I wish all our enemies were as easy jobs."

I could not answer for a moment; then I asked if he would ever get free again.

"I could get free again," said Marah; "but that man isn't like me. He's enlisted for three years. I doubt the war will last so long. The free trade will be done by the time he's discharged. You see, Jim, we free-traders can only make a little while the nations are fighting. By this time three years Mr Cottier can talk all he's a mind."

I had never liked Mr Cottier, but I felt a sort of pity for him. Then I felt that perhaps the discipline would be the making of him, and that, if he kept steady, he might even rise in the Spanish Navy, since he was a man of education. Then I thought of poor Mrs Cottier at home, and I felt that her husband must be saved at all costs.

"Oh, Marah," I cried, "don't let him go like that. Go and buy him back. He doesn't deserve to end like that."

"Rot!" said Marah, turning on his heel. "Hands up anchor! Forward to the windlass, Jim. You know your duty."

The men ran to their places. Very soon we were under sail again, out at sea, with the Spanish coast in the distance astern, a line of bluish hills, almost like clouds.



CHAPTER XV

THE BATTLE ON THE SHORE

We had rough weather on the passage north, so that we were forced to go slowly creeping from port to port, from Bayonne to Fecamp, always in dread of boats of the English frigates, which patrolled the whole coast, keeping the French merchantmen shut up in harbour.

As we stole slowly to the north, I thought of nothing but the new Spanish sailor. He would be living on crusts, so the smugglers told me; and always he would have an overseer to prod him with a knife if, in a moment of sickness or weariness, he faltered in his work, no matter how hard it might be. But by this time I had learned that the smugglers loved to frighten me. I know now that there was not a word of truth in any of the tales they told me.

At Etaples we were delayed for nearly a fortnight, waiting, first of all, for cargo, and then for a fair wind. There were two other smugglers' luggers at Etaples with us. They were both waiting for the wind to draw to the south or southeast, so that they could dash across to Romney Sands.

As they had more cargo than they could stow, they induced Marah to help them by carrying their surplus. They were a whole day arguing about it before they came to terms; but it ended, as we all knew that it would end, by Marah giving the other captains drink, and leading them thus to give him whatever terms he asked.

The other smugglers in our boat were not very eager to work with strangers; but Marah talked them over. Only old Gateo would not listen to him.

"Something bad will come of it," he kept saying. "You mark what I say: something bad will come of it."

Then Marah would heave a sea-boot at him, and tell him to hold his jaw; and the old man would mutter over his quid and say that we should see.

We loaded our lugger with contraband goods, mostly lace and brandy, an extremely valuable cargo. The work of loading kept the men from thinking about Gateo's warnings, though, like most sailors, they were all very superstitious.

Then some French merchants gave us a dinner at the inn, to wish us a good voyage, and to put new spirit into us, by telling us what good fellows we were. But the dinner was never finished; for before they had begun their speeches a smuggler came in to say that the wind had shifted, and that it was now breezing up from the southeast. So we left our plates just as they were. The men rose up from their chairs, drank whatever was in their cups at the moment, and marched out of the inn in a body.

To me it seemed bitterly cold outside the inn, I shivered till my teeth chattered.

Marah asked me if I had a touch of fever, or if I were ill, or "what was it, anyway, that made me shiver so?"

I said that I was cold.

"Cold!" he said. "Cold? Why, it's one of the hottest nights we have had this summer. Here's a youngster says he's cold!"

One or two of them laughed at me then; for it was, indeed, a hot night. They laughed and chaffed together as they cast off the mooring ropes.

For my part, I felt that my sudden chilly fit was a warning that there was trouble coming. I can't say why I felt that, but I felt it; and I believe that Marah in some way felt it, too. Almost the last thing I saw that night, as I made up my bed under the half-deck among a few sacks and bolts of canvas, was Marah scowling and muttering, as though uneasy, at the foot of the foremast, from which he watched the other luggers as they worked out of the river ahead of us.