He took me by the collar, and walked me swiftly to a little cove, where one or two of the Tor Cross fishers kept their boats. I heard a gun or two away in the distance, and then a great clatter of shingle, as the coastguards' horses trotted back towards us, with the led horse between two of them, as the prize of the night. They did not hear us, and could not see us, and Marah took good care not to let me cry out to them. He just turned my face up to his, and muttered, "You just try it. You try it, son, and I'll hold you in the sea till you choke." The wind was blowing from the direction of the coastguards towards us, and even if I had cried out, perhaps, they would never have heard me. You may think me a great coward to have given in in this way; but few boys of my age would have made much outcry against a man like Marah. He made the heart die within you; and to me, cold and wet from my ducking, terrified of capture in spite of my innocence (for I was not at all sure that the smugglers would not swear that I had joined them, and had helped them in their fights and escapades), the outlook seemed so hopeless and full of misery that I could do nothing. My one little moment of mutiny was gone, my one little opportunity was lost. Had I made a dash for it--But it is useless to think in that way. Marah got into the one boat which floated in the little artificial creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house, there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then, shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the cave by Black Pool. We had not gone far (certainly not fifty yards), when we saw the horses of the coastguards galloping down to the sea, one of the horses shying at the whiteness of the breaking water. A voice hailed us. "Boat ahoy!" it shouted; "what are you doing in the boat there?" And then all the horsemen drew up in a clump among the rocks. "Us be drifting, master," shouted Marah, speaking in the broad dialect of the Devon men; "us be drifting." "Come in till I have a look at you," cried the voice again. "Row in to the rocks here." "Us a-got no o-ars," shouted Marah, letting the boat slip on. "Lie down, son," he said; "they will fire in another minute." Indeed, we heard the ramrods in the carbines and the loud click of the gun-cocks. "Boat ahoy!" cried the voice again. "Row in at once! D'ye hear? Row in at once, or I shall fire on you." Marah did not answer. "Present arms!" cried the voice again after a pause; and at that Marah bowed down in the stern sheets under the gunwale.