I suppose that we worked in this way for half an hour or a little more. The men had worked well at Black Pool, where the run had been timed to end in darkness. Now that they had to race the daylight they worked like slaves under an overseer. One string of horses trotted off, fully loaded, within twenty minutes. A second string was led down; in the growing light I could see them stamping and tossing; they were backed right down into the sea, so that the water washed upon their hocks.
"Here, Jim," said Marah suddenly, stopping me in my work, "come here to me. Look here," he said, when I stood before him. "It's getting too light for this game. We may have to cut and run. Take this hatchet here, and go forward to the bows. When I say 'cut,' you cut, without looking round. Cut the cable, see? Cut it in two, mucho pronto. And you, Hankin—you, Gateo. Stand by the halliards, stretch them along ready to hoist. No. Hoist them. Don't wait. Hoist them now."
One or two others lent their hands at the halliards, and the sails were hoisted. The men in the other luggers laughed and jeered.
"What are you hoisting sail for?" they cried.
"Sail-drill of a forenoon," cried another, perhaps a deserter from the navy.
"Shut up," Marah answered. "Don't mind them, boys. Heave round. Heave round at what you're doing. Over with them tubs, sons! My hat! Those fellows are mad to be playing this game in a light like this. There's a fort within three miles of us."
He had hardly finished speaking, when one of the men at the side of the lugger suddenly looked towards the beach, as though he had caught sight of something.
"Something's up," he said sharply.
The beach and the shore beyond were both very flat in that part; nothing but marshy land, overgrown with tussock-grass, and a few sand-dunes, covered with bents. It was not a country which could give much cover to an enemy; but in that half-light one could not distinguish very clearly, and an enemy could therefore take risks impossible in full day.
"A lot of cattle there," said the smuggler who had spoken. "It's odd there being so many."
"Don't you graze many cattle here?" said Marah, looking ashore.
"What! in the marsh?" said the man. "Not much."
"Them's no cattle," said Marah, after a pause, "Them's not cows. Them's horses. Sure they're horses. Yes, and there's men mounting them. They have crawled up, leading their horses, and now we're done. Look out, boys!" he shouted. "Look out! Get on board."
Even as he spoke the whole shore seemed to bristle with cavalry. Each slowly moving horse stopped a moment, for his rider to mount. There were fifty or sixty of them: they seemed to spread all along the edge of the bay except at the northern end, where the line was not quite closed.
"Sentries asleep," said Mafah. "This is the way they carry on in Kent. Yes. There's the sentry. Asleep on the sand-dune. Oh, yes. Time to wake up it is. You Mahon ape. Look at him."
We saw the sentry leap to his feet, almost under the nose of a horse. He was too much surprised even to fire his pistol. He just jumped up, all dazed, holding up his hands to show that he surrendered. We saw two men on foot secure his hands. That was our first loss.
It all happened very, very quickly. We were taken by surprise, all unready, with our men ashore or mixed among the horses, or carrying tubs in the water. The troops and preventives were over the last dune and galloping down the sand to us almost before Marah had finished speaking; yet even then in all the confusion, as a captain shouted to us to "surrender in the name of the King," the smugglers were not without resource. A young man in a blue Scotch bonnet jumped on one of the horses, snatching another horse by the rein; half-a-dozen others did the same; the second string, half-loaded, started as they were up the sand and away at full gallop for the north end of the bay, where no soldiers showed as yet.
It was done in an instant of time; drilled horsemen could not have done it; the little man in the blue bonnet saw the one loophole and dashed for it. There was no shouting. One or two men spoke, and then there it was—done. Practically all the horses were lashing along the beach, going full tilt for safety: they galloped in a body like a troop of cavalry. Two preventives rode at them to stop them, but they rode slap into the preventives, tumbled them over, horse and man and then galloped on, not looking back. A trooper reined in, whipped up his carbine and fired, and that was the beginning of the fight. Then there came a general volley; pistols and carbines cracked and banged; a lot of smoke blew about the beach and along the water; our men shouted to each other; the soldiers cheered.
In another ten seconds a battle was going on in the water all round us. The horsemen urged their horses right up to the sides of the luggers.
The men in the water hacked at the horses' legs with their hangers; the horses screamed and bit. I saw one wounded horse seize a smuggler by the arm and shake him as a dog shakes a rat; the rider of the horse, firing at the man, shot the horse by accident through the head. I suppose he was too much excited to know what he was doing—I fancy that men in a battle are never quite sane. The horse fell over in the water, knocking down another horse, and then there was a lashing in the sea as the horse tried to rise. The smugglers cut at him in the sea and all the time his rider was half under water trying to get up and pulling at the trigger of his useless, wetted pistol.
It all happened so quickly, that was the strange thing. In one minute we were hard at work at the tubs, in the next we were struggling and splashing, hacking at each other with swords, firing in each other's faces. Half-a-dozen horsemen tried to drag the lugger towards the shore, but the men beat them back, knocked them from their saddles, or flogged the horses over the nose with pistol-butts.
All this time the guns were banging, men were crying out, horses were screaming; it was the most confused thing I ever saw.
Marah knocked down a trooper with a broken cleat and shouted to me to cut the cable—which I did at once. One or two men ran to trim sail, and Marah took the tiller. At that moment a trooper rode into the sea just astern of us—I remember to this day the brightness of the splash his horse made; Marah turned at the noise and shot the horse; but the man fired too, and Marah seemed to stagger and droop over the tiller as though badly hit. Seeing that, I ran aft to help him. It seemed to me as I ran that the side of the lugger was all red with clambering, shouting soldiers, all of them firing pistols at me.
Marah picked himself up as I got there. "Out of the way, boy," he cried. Two or three smugglers rallied round him. There were more shots, more cries. Half-a-dozen redcoats came aft in a rush; someone hit me a blow on the head, and all my life seemed to pass from me in a stream of fire out at my eyes. The last thing which I remember of the tussle was the face of the man who hit me. He was a pale man with wide eyes, his helmet knocked off, his stock loose at his throat; I just saw him as I fell, and then everything passed from my sight in a sound of roaring, like the roaring of waters in a spate.
CHAPTER XVI.
DRIFTING
When I recovered consciousness, the sun had risen; it was bright daylight all about us. That was really the first thing which I saw—the light of the sun on the deck. I struggled up to a sitting position, feeling great pain in my head. Marah lying over the tiller was the next thing which I saw; he was dead, I thought. Then I realised what had happened; we had had a fight. We were not under control; we were drifting with the tide up and down, with our sails backing and filling; up and down the deck there were wounded men, some of them preventives, some of them smugglers—poor Hankin was one of them. When I stood up I saw that I was the only person on his feet in the boat: it was not strange, perhaps.