[CHAPTER XIII--The Escape]
Strong hands seized the box and lifted it on to a cart, the rough springs of which shook alarmingly as they felt the weighty load.
Then came a hurried discussion as to the destination of the booty, some, including the parish clerk, Fallowfield, who had gained the upper regions by means of the tackle, urging that it had best be taken and placed in the tower of Worth Church, the others insisting that it would be best to make one journey do, and convey it as close to Wareham as possible, where their accomplices could make arrangements for its distribution.
The latter argument prevailed; a heavy tarpaulin was thrown over the cart, a whip cracked, and we were off. I could hear the sound of the brushwood being replaced and the rough farewell greetings of the smugglers, and, by the jolting of the cart and the muffled noise of the wheels, I knew that the route lay across a grassy down.
Presently I became emboldened sufficiently to clear away the material that prevented an outlook through the hole in the woodwork of the box. But my task was unavailing, for it was night, and the darkness so intense that nothing could be distinguished.
For quite half an hour the cart jolted over the sward, then the wheels struck the hard surface of a road, and the pace became quicker but more even.
There were but two men with the cart, and their conversation was carried on in a series of short sentences spoken in the broadest Dorset dialect.
Presently a low oath came from one of the men, and the cart was dragged off the roadway and hidden in a hollow, or such I thought it to be.
Wondering at the cause of this, I heard the sound of horse's hoofs coming nearer and nearer; then, with a deafening clatter on the stony road, the animal passed by, and the sounds died away in the distance.
"It be 'e, sure enow," muttered one of the men.