The Adventures of Harry Revel

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

"Dragoons! Dragoons!"

As the yell reached me from the waterside and the men there scattered and ran, I saw the shock of the double charge—the flame overhead lighting up every detail of it. The riderless horses, though they opened and swerved, neither turned tail nor checked their pace, but heading suddenly towards the left wing of the troop went through it as water through a gate, the dragoons either vainly hacking at them with their sabres, or leaning from their saddles and as vainly attempting to grip the brutes. Grip there was none to be had. These were smugglers' horses, clipped to the skin, with houghed manes, and tails and bodies sleek with soft soap. Nor did the dragoons waste more trouble upon them, but charged forward and down upon the crowd at the water's edge.

And as they charged I saw—but could not believe—that on a sudden the crowd had vanished. A moment before they had been jostling, shouting, cursing. They were gone now like ghosts. The light still flared overhead. It showed no boat beyond the cove—only the troopers reaching right across it in an irregular line, as each man had been able to check his horse—the most of them on the verge of the shingle, but many floundering girth-deep, and one or two even swimming. The Riding Officer, who had followed them, was bawling and pointing with his whip towards the cliff—at what I could not tell.

I had no time to wonder: for an unholy din broke out, on the same instant, at the head of the beach. A couple of the smugglers' horses had been hurled over by the dragoons' impact, and lay, hurt beyond recovery, lashing out across the shingle with their heels. A third had gone down under a sabre-cut, but had staggered up and was lobbing after his comrades at a painful canter. They had traversed the heavy shingle, reached the harder stones at the cove's head and were sailing away at stretched gallop when a volley rang out from the shadow of the cliff there, and the scream of more than one mingled with fresh shouting. At that moment, and just before the flame above me sank and died almost as swiftly as it had first shot up, a soldier—not a dragoon, but a man in red coat and white breeches—ran forward and sprang at the girth of the wounded horse, which had stumbled again. He did the wise thing—for a single girth was these horses' only harness: but whether he caught it or not I could not tell. Ten or a dozen soldiers followed, to help him. And, the next instant, total darkness came down on the scene like a shutter.

It did not last long. The red-coats, it turned out, had brought lanterns, and now, at a shouted order from their commanding officer answering the call of the dragoon officer below, began to light them. They meant, I doubted not, to make a strict search of the cliffs; and, if they did—my cave being but a shallow one—there was no hope for me. But just then a dismounted trooper came running up the beach, his scabbard scraping the shingle as he went by: and his first words explained the mystery of the crowd's disappearance.

"Where's your officer commanding?" he panted. "The devils have got away into the next cove through a kind of hole in the cliff—a kind of archway so far as we make out. They've blocked it with stones and posted three-four men there, threatening sudden death. By their own account they're armed. Major Dilke's holding them to parley, and wants the loan of a lantern while you, sir, march your men round and take the gang in the rear. They reckon they've none but us to deal with."

The infantry officer grunted that he understood, sent the trooper back with a lantern, and quietly formed up and marched off his company. From my hiding-place I caught scraps of the parley at the lower end of the beach—or rather of Major Dilke's share in it; for the smugglers answered him through a tunnel, and I could only hear their voices mumbling in response to the threats which he flung forth on the wide night. He was in no sweet temper, having been cheated of a rich haul: for the flare had, of course, warned away the expected boat, and I supposed that some of the red-coats had been dispatched at once to search the headland for the man who lit it. Revenge was now the Major's game, and, by his tune, he meant to have it.

But while I lay listening, a stone trickled from the cliff overhead and plumped softly upon the seaweed at the mouth of my cave. It was followed by a rush of small gravel (had the Major not, at the moment, been declaiming at his loudest, his men must surely have heard it): and this again by the plumb fall of a heavy body which still lay for a full five seconds after alighting, and then emitted a groan so eloquent that it raised the roots of my hair.

I held my breath. More seconds passed, and the body groaned again, still more dolefully.

We were within three yards of one another; and, friend or foe, if he continued to lie and groan like this for long, flesh and blood could not stand it.