ing shadows that of a whole mass of people inert and darkly
crowded there: and then--almost as I guessed their business--the
cliff above me shot up a flame; and their forms and their dismayed
upturned faces stood out distinct in the glare of it.

"Loose the horses and clear!" yelled someone; and another voice deep
and wrathful began to curse, but was drowned by a stampede of hoofs
upon the shingle. Straight forth from the sea--or so it looked to
me--some twenty or thirty naked horses, without rider, bit, or
bridle, broke from the crowd and came plunging up the beach at a
gallop. They were met by a roar from the cove-head, and with that a
line of glittering helmets and cuirasses sprang out of the night and
charged past me.

"Dragoons! Dragoons!"

As the yell reached me from the waterside and the men there scattered
and ran, I saw the shock of the double charge--the flame overhead
lighting up every detail of it. The riderless horses, though they
opened and swerved, neither turned tail nor checked their pace, but
heading suddenly towards the left wing of the troop went through it
as water through a gate, the dragoons either vainly hacking at them
with their sabres, or leaning from their saddles and as vainly
attempting to grip the brutes. Grip there was none to be had.
These were smugglers' horses, clipped to the skin, with houghed
manes, and tails and bodies sleek with soft soap. Nor did the
dragoons waste more trouble upon them, but charged forward and down
upon the crowd at the water's edge.

And as they charged I saw--but could not believe--that on a sudden
the crowd had vanished. A moment before they had been jostling,
shouting, cursing. They were gone now like ghosts. The light still
flared overhead. It showed no boat beyond the cove--only the
troopers reaching right across it in an irregular line, as each man
had been able to check his horse--the most of them on the verge of
the shingle, but many floundering girth-deep, and one or two even
swimming. The Riding Officer, who had followed them, was bawling and
pointing with his whip towards the cliff--at what I could not tell.

I had no time to wonder: for an unholy din broke out, on the same
instant, at the head of the beach. A couple of the smugglers' horses
had been hurled over by the dragoons' impact, and lay, hurt beyond
recovery, lashing out across the shingle with their heels. A third
had gone down under a sabre-cut, but had staggered up and w