and cheated me as
he did--oh, if I could only see him hung!"

A couple of hours later, after seeing the lugger's masts and sails
slowly disappear, the cutter was once more at her old moorings, and
leaving the boatswain in charge, the lieutenant had himself rowed
ashore, to land upon the ledge, and carefully search the rocks for some
sight of a cargo having been landed.

But the smugglers and their shore friends had been more careful this
time, and search where they would, the cutter's men could find no traces
of anything of the kind, and the lieutenant had himself rowed back to
the cutter, keeping the boat alongside, ready to send along shore to the
cove to seek for tidings of Gurr and Dick but altering his mind, he had
the little vessel unmoored once more to run back the six miles along the
coast till the cutter was abreast of the cove,--the first place where it
seemed possible for a boat to land,--and here he sent a crew ashore to
bring his two men off.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"How many horses has your father got?"

"Three."

"What colour are they?"

"Black, white, and grey."

"Turn round three times, and catch whom you may."

That, as everyone knows, is the classical way of beginning the game of
Blind Man's Buff; and supposing that the blinded man _pro tem_, is
properly bandaged, and cannot get a squint of light up by the side of
his nose, and also supposing that he confuses himself by turning round
the proper number of times honestly, he will be in profound darkness,
and in utter ignorance of the direction of door, window, or the salient
objects in the room.

Take another case. Suppose a lad to have eaten a hearty supper of some
particularly hard pastry. The probabilities are that he will either
have the peculiar form of dream known as nightmare, or some time in the
night he will get out of bed, and go wandering about his room in the
darkness, to awake at last, cold, confused, and asking himself where he
is, without the slightest ability to give a reasonable answer to his
question.

It has fallen to the lot of some people to be lost in a fog--words,
these, which can only be appreciated by those who have passed through a
similar experience.

The writer has gone through these experiences more than once, and fully
realised the peculiar sensation of helplessness, confusion, and brain
numbing which follows. Dark as pitch is mostly a figure of speech, for
the obscurity is generally relieved by somethin