In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

“I’ll trouble you to let me pass.”

Coppinger thrust the Preventive man aside, and went on his way.

When he was beyond earshot, Scantlebray said—“I trust he did not notice me along with you. You see, the night is too dirty. Let him bless his stars, it has saved him.”

“I should like to see Jenkyns,” said the officer. “I am almost certain I heard a pistol-shot; but when I sent in the direction whence it came, there was no one to be seen. It’s a confounded dark night.”

“I hope they’ve not give us the slip, Captain?” said Wyvill.

“Impossible,” answered the officer. “Impossible. I took every precaution. They did not go out to-night. As Mr. Scantlebray says, the night was too dirty.”

Then they went on.

In the meantime Coppinger was making the best of his way to the downs. He knew his direction even in the dark—he had the “new-take” wall as a guide. What the coast-guard did not suspect was that this “new-take” had been made for the very purpose of serving as a guide by which the smugglers could find their course in the blackest of winter’s nights; moreover, in the fiercest storm the wall served as a shelter, under lea of which they might approach their cave. Coppinger was without a lantern. He doubted if one would avail him, in his quest; moreover, the night was lightening, as the moon rode higher.

The smuggler captain stood for a moment on the edge of the cliffs to consider what course he should adopt to find Judith. If she had reached the summit, it was possible enough that she had lost her way and had rambled inland among lanes and across fields, pixy-led. In that case it was a hopeless task to search for her; moreover, there would be no particular necessity for him to do so, as, sooner or later, she must reach a cottage or a farm, where she could learn her direction. But if she had gone too near the edge, or if, in her ascent, her foot had slipped, then he must search the shore. The tide was ebbing now, and left a margin on which he could walk. This was the course he must adopt. He did not descend by the track to the chimney, as the creeping down of the latter could be effected in absolute darkness only with extreme risk; but he bent his way over the down skirting the crescent indentation of the cove to the donkey-path, which was now, as he knew, unwatched. By that he swiftly and easily descended to the beach. Along the shore he crept carefully toward that portion which was overhung by the precipice along which the way ran from the mouth of the shaft. The night was mending, or at all events seemed better. The moon, as it mounted, cast a glimmer through the least opaque portions of the driving clouds. Coppinger looked up, and could see the ragged fringe of down torn with gullies, and thrust up into prongs, black as ink against the gray of the half-translucent vapors. And near at hand was the long dorsal ridge that concealed the entrance to the cave, sloping rapidly upward and stretching away before him into shadow.

Coppinger mused. If one were to fall from above, would he drop between the cliff and this curtain, or would he strike and be projected over it on to the shelving sand up which stole the waves? He knew that the water eddying against friable sandstone strata that came to the surface had eaten them out with the wash, and that the hard flakes of slate and ribs of quartz stood forth, overhanging the cave. Most certainly, therefore, had Judith fallen, her body must be sought on the sea-face of the masking ridge. The smuggler stood at the very point where in the preceding afternoon Jamie and the dog had scrambled up that fin-like blade of rock and disappeared from the astonished gaze of Judith. The moon, smothered behind clouds, and yet, in a measure self-assertive, cast sufficient light down into the cove to glitter on, and transmute into steel, the sea-washed and smoothed, and still wet, ridge, sloping inland as a seawall. As Coppinger stood looking upward he saw in the uncertain light something caught on the fangs of this saw-ridge, moving uneasily this way, then that, something dark, obscuring the glossed surface of the rock, as it might be a mass of gigantic sea-tangles.