Immediately a harsh guttural gabbling broke out among the crew, which was at once checked by a gruff order from someone in the stern-sheets.
Edmund hurried down to the boat, as her crew hauled the bow a few yards up on the beach.
Snape and I followed him more slowly. We seemed to be forgotten in the silent bustle that was taking place.
I could just make out the lines of an able, roomy ship’s boat, and I was a good deal surprised at the amount of cargo she had brought ashore. Case after case was being handed out and stacked on the beach. They looked like good-sized packing-cases, and the men handled them as though they were fairly heavy.
However, the crew of six had them out in about a minute, and then each man shouldered a case with surprising dexterity and they started in a group stumbling up the beach under their loads.
In the darkness I could just make out that some of the men had loose Turkish trousers and some wore the long robe or galabieh of the Arab. Their faces were invisible in the dusk, except for glints of white from eyes and teeth, and most of them seemed to have a white handkerchief or turban bound round their heads.
Edmund and the man who had been in the stern-sheets were talking aside in low tones, and now they guided the laden men to the rough path in the cliff leading to the tunnel.
Snape and I followed, fascinated by this strange, impossible invasion of our quiet Sussex cove.
“It is quite like the old days of the smugglers!” giggled Snape.
It irritated me to feel that he had no sense of the real eerie strangeness and mystery of the scene, and I wished I were alone.