We heard the sergeant's horse squirming about as the sergeant tried to mount, and then the two galloped off. Voices sounded close beside us, and feet moved upon the sand. "Still!" growled Marah in my ear. Some one cried out, "Further on. They're fighting further on. Hurry up, and we shall see it."
About a dozen Tor Cross men were hurrying up, in the chance of seeing a skirmish. The wife of one of them—old Mrs. Rivers—followed after them, calling to her man to come back. "I'll give it to 'ee, if 'ee don't come back. Come back, I tell 'ee." They passed on rapidly, pursued by the angry woman, while more shots banged and cracked further and further along the shore.
We waited till they passed out of hearing, and then Marah got up. "Come on, son," he said. "We must be going. Lucky your teeth didn't chatter, or they'd have heard us."
"I wish they had heard us," I cried, hotly. "Then I'd have gone home to-night. Let me go, Marah. Let me go home."
"Next trip, Jim," he said kindly. "Not this. I want you to learn about life. You will get mewed up with them ladies else, and then you will never do anything."
"Ah," I said. "But if you don't let me go I'll scream. Now then. I'll scream."
"Scream away, son," said Marah, calmly. "There's not many to hear you. But you'll not get home after what you have seen to-night. Come on, now."
He took me by the collar, and walked me swiftly to a little cove, where one or two of the Tor Cross fishers kept their boats. I heard a gun or two away in the distance, and then a great clatter of shingle, as the coastguards' horses trotted back towards us, with the led horse between two of them, as the prize of the night. They did not hear us, and could not see us, and Marah took good care not to let me cry out to them. He just turned my face up to his, and muttered, "You just try it. You try it, son, and I'll hold you in the sea till you choke."
The wind was blowing from the direction of the coastguards towards us, and even if I had cried out, perhaps, they would never have heard me. You may think me a great coward to have given in in this way; but few boys of my age would have made much outcry against a man like Marah. He made the heart die within you; and to me, cold and wet from my ducking, terrified of capture in spite of my innocence (for I was not at all sure that the smugglers would not swear that I had joined them, and had helped them in their fights and escapades), the outlook seemed so hopeless and full of misery that I could do nothing. My one little moment of mutiny was gone, my one little opportunity was lost. Had I made a dash for it—But it is useless to think in that way.
Marah got into the one boat which floated in the little artificial creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house, there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then, shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the cave by Black Pool.