If ever man was surprised, that man was Smuggler Hawkins. But he answered the call to surrender with a shout of defiance.
After this it was all a wild medley of pistols cracking, cutlasses clashing, cries—yes, and, I am sorry to say, a few groans; for blood was shed, and one man at least would never sail the salt seas more. But if blood was shed, the seas washed it off; for the fight took place with the spray driving over both vessels, white in the moonlight.
A prize crew was left on the Brixham, and in less than twenty minutes both craft were safe at anchor in Torquay harbour.
Meanwhile, the party who had been landed near to Hope’s Nose had made their way inland, bearing somewhat to the east to make a detour, both for the purpose of getting well in the rear of the smugglers’ cottage—where Tom Fairlie, who was in command, knew the smugglers were to be found—and because the night was still young.
When Scrivings left the outlook with Dan on watch, he betook himself to this cottage, in order to complete arrangements for landing the cargo, every bale and tub of which they had meant to haul up from Daddy’s Hole to the plains above, then to cart them away inland.
But he found his ten men ready, and even the horses and carts in waiting. They were hired conveyances. The smugglers found no difficulty in getting help to secure their booty in those days, when many even of the resident gentry of England sympathized with contraband trade. So there was nothing to be done but to wait.
It was a lonely enough spot where the little cottage stood among rocks and woodland. Lovely as well as lonely and wild; though I fear its beauties alone did nothing to recommend the place to the favour of “Capting” Scrivings and his merry men.
The night waned. The moon rose higher and higher. The men in the bothy, having eaten and drunk, had got tired at last of card-playing, and nearly all were curled up and asleep.
The sentry had seated himself on a stone outside, and he too was nodding, lulled into dreamland by the sough of the wind among the solemn pines.
The wind favoured Fairlie’s party, who, as stealthily as Indians, crept towards the cottage from the rear.