“Ain’t we enough for an old man?”
“More nor enough,” replied Rodney, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone, “if the old boy han’t got friends with him. Don’t ye think Bax might have took a fancy to spend the night there?”
“No,” said Long Orrick; “Bax is at supper in Sandhill Cottage, and he ain’t the man to leave good quarters in a hurry. But if yer afraid, we’ll go with our chums to the churchyard and take them along with us.”
Rodney Nick laughed contemptuously, but made no reply, and the two immediately set off at a run to overtake their comrades. Tommy Bogey followed as close at their heels as he prudently could. They reached the walls of Saint George’s Church, or the “Great Chapel,” almost at the same moment with the rest of the party.
The form of the old church could be dimly seen against the tempestuous sky as the smugglers halted under the lee of the churchyard wall like a band of black ghosts that had come to lay one of their defunct comrades, on a congenial night.
At the north end of the burying-ground of Saint George’s Church there is a spot of ground which is pointed out to visitors as being the last resting-place of hundreds of the unfortunate men who fell in the sea-fights of our last war with France. A deep and broad trench was dug right across the churchyard, and here the gallant tars were laid in ghastly rows, as close together as they could be packed. Near to this spot stands the tomb of one of Lord Nelson’s young officers, and beside it grows a tree against which Nelson is said to have leaned when he attended the funeral.
It was just a few yards distant from this tree that the smugglers scaled the wall and lifted over the helpless body of poor Coleman. They did it expeditiously and in dead silence. Carrying him into the centre of the yard, they deposited the luckless coast-guard-man flat on his back beside the tomb of George Philpot, a man who had done good service in his day and generation—if headstones are to be believed. The inscription, which may still be seen by the curious, runs thus:—
A Tribute to the
Skill and Determined Courage
Of the Boatmen of Deal,
And in Memory of
George Philpot,
Who Died March 22, 1850.
“Full many lives he saved
With his undaunted crew;
He put his trust in Providence,
And cared not how it blew.”
In the companionship of such noble dead, the smugglers left Coleman to his fate, and set off to finish their night’s work at old Jeph’s humble cottage.