"You would have explained to us that we were on a false scent, sir," said Cornwallis.
"No, my child, I should not," answered Mr. Foster, "for the very good reason that I should never have seen either of you again alive. Nor would anybody else. If you had started to go back by the beach, you would both have been overtaken by the tide and most certainly been drowned."
"Crikey!" said Cornwallis under his breath to me.
"Yes," continued the good and great Mr. Foster, "if Joe here, quite ignorant of the fact that you were trespassing in his store shed, had not turned the key upon you both, you would neither of you be alive to tell your story now."
Somehow we never thought we were trespassing, but doing our duty to England. It just shows how different a thing looks from different points of view.
"You ought to be very thankful," said Mr. Foster, "and I hope this terrible experience will leave its mark in your hearts, my boys. You have been spared a sad and untimely death, and I trust that the memory of this night will help you both to justify your existence in time to come."
We said we trusted it would.
Then Brown, of course, put in his oar.
"And if you had used your eyes, Towler and Cornwallis, as I have tried so often to make you," he squeaked, "you would have seen a notice on the cliff warning people not to go beyond a certain point, as the tides were very dangerous."
"We were studying the wonders of Nature, sir," I answered, in rather a sublime tone of voice, because this was no time for sitting on Cornwallis and me. And just then the motor-boat came to shore, and it was found that we could catch the last train back to Daleham. So we caught it. Of course, all the other chaps had gone back in the brakes ages ago.