We were helped out of the lugger on to the ledge above the channel, and the smugglers walked behind us up the stairs to the room we had just left. The other coastguard was still snoring, and that seemed strange to me, for the last few minutes had seemed like hours.
"Better bring him inside, boss," said one of the smugglers. "He may try the same game."
"He's got no young sprig to cut his lashings," said Marah. "He'll be well enough." So they left the man to his quiet and passed on with their other prisoners into the inner room.
CHAPTER IX
SIGNING ON
The inner room was much larger than the prison chamber; it was not littered with boxes, but clean and open like a frigate's lower deck. It was not, perhaps, quite so light as the other room, but there were great holes in the cliff hidden by bushes from the view of passing fishermen, and the sun streamed through these on to the floor, leaving only the ends of the room in shadow. The room had been arranged like the mess-deck of a war-ship; there were sea-chests and bags ranged trimly round the inner wall; there was a trestle table littered with tin pannikins and plates. The roof was supported by a line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions, containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the presence of Captain Sharp himself.
The drunken smuggler who had sung of Captain Glen was the only occupant of the room when we entered: he sat half asleep in his chest, still clutching his pannikin, still muttering about the boatswain. He was an Italian by birth, so Marah told me. He was known as Gateo. When he was sober he was a good seaman, but when he was drunk he would do nothing but sing of Captain Glen until he dropped off to sleep. He had served in the Navy, Marah told me, and had once been a boatswain's mate in the Victory; but he had deserted, and now he was a smuggler living in a hole in the earth.
"And now," said Marah, after he had told me all this, "you and me will have to talk. Step into the other room there, you boys," he cried to the other smugglers: "I want to have a word with master here."
One of the men—he was the big man who had raised the alarm on us; I never knew his real name, everybody always called him Extry—said glumly that he "wasn't going to oblige boys, not for dollars."
Marah turned upon him, and the two men faced each other; the others stood expectantly, eager for a fight. "Step into the other room there," repeated Marah quietly.