“So there’d always be water if you had to stand a siege,” said Edred.
On both sides of the great cave barrels and bales were heaped on a sanded floor. There were a table and benches cut out of solid chalk, and an irregular opening partly blocked by a mass of fallen cliff, through which you saw the mysterious twilit sea, with stars coming out over it.
You saw this, and you felt—quite suddenly, too—a wild wind that pressed itself against you like a wrestler trying a fall, and whistled in your ears and drove you back to the big cave, out of breath and panting.
“There’ll be half a gale to-night,” said the smuggler; for such, no doubt, he was.
“Do you think the French will land to-morrow in Lymchurch Bay?” Edred asked.
By the light of the lantern the smuggler solemnly winked.
“You two can keep a secret, I know,” he said. “The French won’t land; it’s us what’ll land, and we’ll land here and not in bay; and what we’ll land is a good drop of the real thing, and a yard or two of silk or lace maybe. I don’t know who ’twas put it about as the French was a-coming, but you may lay to it they aren’t no friends of the Revenue.”
“Oh, I see,” said Elfrida. “And did——”
“The worst of it’ll be the look-out they’ll keep. Lucky for us it’s all our men as has volunteered for duty. And we know our friends.”
“But do you mean,” said Edred, “that you can be friends with a Frenchman, when we’re at war with them?”