I looked for the preventives, but I could not see them. Most of them had gone after the horses across Romney Marsh. I did not know till long afterwards that the smugglers had beaten off the rest of the party, killing some and about twenty horses, and wounding nearly every other man engaged. It had been, in fact, a very determined battle, one of the worst ever fought between the smugglers and the authorities on that coast. As soon as the fight was over, the luggers got out from the shore, and the troops made off with their wounded to report at the fort, and to signal the Ness cutter to go in chase. At the moment when I looked for them they must, I think, have been rallying again. I could not see them, that was enough for me. Years afterwards I talked with one of the survivors, an old cavalryman. He told me how the fight had seemed to him as he rode in at us. "And d'ye know, sir," he said, "they had a boy forward ready with an axe to cut the cable, so I fired at him" ("Thank you," I thought); "and just as I pulled the trigger one of their men hit my gee a welt, and down he came in the water, and so, of course, I missed. But for that, sir, we'd have got them." I wondered which of the men had saved my life by hitting that "gee a welt" I wondered if he had been killed or taken, or whether he had got aboard us afterwards, or whether one of the other luggers had saved him. Well, I shall never know on this side of the grave. But it is odd, is it not, that one should have one's life saved and never know that it was in danger till twenty years afterwards, when the man who saved it was never likely to be found? But I am getting away from my story. I soon saw that the current was slowly setting us ashore. Marah, with his great manliness, had steered the lugger out to sea for some six hundred yards before he had collapsed. Then his fellows, seeing him, as they supposed, dead, turned to drinking. The lugger, left to herself, took charge, and swung round head to wind. Since then she had drifted, sometimes making a stern-board, sometimes going ahead a little, but nearly always drifting slowly shoreward, flogging her gear, making a great clatter of blocks. If the soldiers had been half smart they would have seen that she was not under command, and ridden to Dymchurch, taken boat, and come after us. But they had had a severe beating, many of them were wounded, and they had watched our start feeling that we had safely escaped from them. I have never had much opinion of soldiers. Boys generally take their opinions ready made from their elders. I took mine from Marah, who, being a sailor, thought that a soldier was something too silly for words.