We stayed in Kermorvan for a week or more, waiting for our cargo of brandy, silk, and tobacco, and for letters and papers addressed to the French war-prisoners in the huge prison on Dartmoor.
I was very unhappy in Kermorvan, thinking of home. It would have been less dismal had I had more to do, but I was unoccupied and a prisoner, in charge of an old French woman, who spoke little English, so that time passed slowly indeed. At last we set sail up the coast, hugging the French shore, touching at little ports for more cargo till we came to Cartaret. Here a French gentleman (he was a military spy) came aboard us, and then we waited two or three days for a fair wind. At last the wind drew to the east, and we spread all sail for home on a wild morning when the fishermen were unable to keep the sea.
At dusk we were so near to home that I could see the Start and the whole well-known coast from Salcombe to Dartmoor. In fact I had plenty of time to see it, for we doused our sails several miles out to sea, and lay tossing in the storm to a sea-anchor, waiting for the short summer night to fall. When it grew dark enough (of course, in that time of year, it is never very dark even in a storm) we stole in, mile by mile, to somewhere off Flushing, where we showed a light. We showed it three times from the bow, and at the last showing a red light gleamed from Flushing Church. That was the signal to tell us that all was safe, so then we sailed into Black Pool Bay, where the breakers were beating fiercely in trampling ranks.
There were about a dozen men gathered together on the beach. We sailed right in, till we were within ten yards of the sands, and there we moored the lugger by the head and stern, so that her freight could be discharged. The men on the beach waded out through the surf (though it took them up to the armpits), and the men in the lugger passed the kegs and boxes to them. Waves which were unusually big would knock down the men in the water, burden and all, and then there would be laughter from all hands, and grumbles from the victim. I never saw men work harder. The freight was all flung out and landed and packed in half an hour. It passed out in a continual stream from both sides of the boat; everybody working like a person possessed. And when the lugger was nearly free of cargo, and the string of workers in the water was broken on the port side, it occurred to me that I had a chance of escape. It flashed into my mind that it was dark, that no one in the lugger was watching me, that the set of the tide would drive me ashore (I was not a good swimmer, but I knew that in five yards I should be able to touch bottom), and that in another two hours, or less, I should be in bed at home, with all my troubles at an end.
When I thought of escaping, I was standing alone at the stern. A lot of the boat's crew were in the water, going ashore to "run" the cargo, on horseback, to the wilds of Dartmoor. The others were crowded at the bow, watching them go, or watching the men upon the beach, moving here and there by torchlight, packing the kegs on the horses' backs. It was a wild scene. The wind blew the torches into great red fiery banners; the waves hissed and spumed, and glimmered into brightness; you could see the horses shying, and the men hurrying to and fro; and now and then some one would cry out, and then a horse would whinny. All the time there was a good deal of unnecessary talk and babble; the voices and laughter of the seamen came in bursts as the wind lulled. Every now and then a wave would burst with a smashing noise, and the smugglers would laugh at those wetted by the spray. I saw that I had a better chance of landing unobserved on the port side; so I stole to that side, crawled over the gunwale, and slid into the sea without a splash.
The water made me gasp at first; but that only lasted a second. I made a gentle stroke or two towards the shore, trying not to raise my head much, and really I felt quite safe before I had made three strokes. When you swim in the sea at night, you see so little that you feel that you, in your turn, cannot be seen either. All that I could see was a confused mass of shore with torchlights. Every now and then that would be hidden from me by the comb of a wave; and then a following wave would souse into my face and go clean over me; but as my one thought was to be hidden from the lugger, I rather welcomed a buffet of that sort. I very soon touched bottom, for the water near the beach is shallow. I stood up and bent over, so as not to be seen, and began to stumble towards the shelter of the rocks. The business of lading the horses was going steadily forward, with the same noisy hurry. I climbed out of the backwash of the last breaker, and dipped down behind a rock, high and dry on the sands. I was safe, I thought, safe at last, and I was too glad at heart to think of my sopping clothes, and of the cold which already made me shiver like an aspen. Suddenly, from up the hill, not more than a hundred yards from me, came the "Hoo-hoo" of an owl, the smuggler's danger signal. The noise upon the beach ceased at once; the torches plunged into the sand and went out: I heard the lugger's crew cut their cables and hoist sail.
A voice said, "Carry on, boys. The preventives are safe at Bolt Tail," and at that the noise broke out as before.
Some one cried "Sh," and "Still," and in the silence which followed, the "Hoo-hoo" of the owl called again, with a little flourishing note at the end of the call.
A man cried out, "Mount and scatter."
Some one else cried, "Where's Marah?" and as I lay crouched, some one bent over me and touched me.