It shows you what power the night-riders had in those days. They had gone to Salcombe to Mr Cottier's lodgings; they had questioned him, perhaps with threats, till he had confessed that he had betrayed them to the preventives; then they had gagged him, hustled him downstairs to a waiting closed carriage, and then they had quietly driven him on, undisturbed, to their fastness in the cliff. It was sad to see a man fallen so low, a man who had been at the University, and master of a school. It was sad to see him, his flabby face all fallen in and white from excess of fear, and to see his eyes lolling about from one to another man, trying to find a little hope in the look of the faces in the fast-darkening cave.
"Well," he said surlily at last; "you have got me. What are you going to do to me?"
"What d'ye think you deserve?" said Marah. "Eh? You'd have had us all hanged and glad, too. You'll see soon enough what we're going to do to you." He struck a light for his pipe, and lit a candle in a corner of the cave near where I lay. "You'll soon know your fate," he added. "Meanwhile, here's a friend of yours one—you might like to talk to. You'll not get another chance."
At this the man grovelled on the cave floor, crying out to them to let him live, that he would give them all his money, and so on.
"Get up," said Marah; "get up. Try and act like a man, even if you aren't one."
The man went on wailing, "What are you going to do to me?—what are you going to do to me?"
"Spike your guns," said Marah, curtly. "There's your friend in the corner. Talk to him."
He left us together in the cave; an armed smuggler sat at the cave entrance, turning his quid meditatively.
"Mr Cottier," I said, "do you remember Jim—Jim Davis?"
"Jim!" cried Mr Cottier; "Jim, how did you come here?"