Nearer and nearer came the land; the shore, with its bent grass, seemed almost within catapult shot. I heard the wash of the sea upon the beach, I could see the pebbles on the sands shining as the foam left them. And then, suddenly, the lugger drove ashore upon a bank, stern first. In a moment she had swung round, broadside on to the shoal, heaving over on her side. Every wave which struck her lifted her further in, tossing her over on her starboard side. I could see that the tide was now very nearly fully in, and I knew that the lugger would lie there, high and dry, as soon as it ebbed. I made Marah as comfortable as I could, and called to the drunkards to come with me. I told them that a revenue cutter was within six miles of us (there was, as it happened, but she was at anchor off Dymchurch), and that they had better be going out of that before they got themselves arrested. For answer they jeered and made catcalls, flinging a marline-spike at me. I tried a second time to make them come ashore, but one of them said, "Let's do for him," and the other cheered the proposal with loud yells. Then they came lurching aft at me, so I just slipped over the side, and waded very hurriedly ashore. The water was not deep (it was not up to my thighs in any place), so that I soon reached the sand without wetting my package. Then I looked back to see the two smugglers leaning over the side, watching my movements. One of them was singing-- "There was a ship, and a ship of fame: Away, ho! Rise and shine" in a cracked falsetto. The other one was saying, "You come back, you young cub." But I did not do as they bid. I ran up the beach and as far across the wet grassland as I could without once stopping. When I thought that I was safe, I sat down under some bushes, took off my wet things, and dressed myself in my own clothes. I wrung the water from the wet canvas, repacked my parcel, and seeing a road close to me, turned into it at once, resolved to ask the way to London at the first house. I suppose that it was five o'clock in the morning when I began my journey. CHAPTER XVII THE "BLUE BOAR" As I stepped out, the adventure, the fight, Marah's wound, all the tumult of the battle, seemed very far away, and as though they had happened to some one else who had told me of them. If my head had not ached so cruelly from the blow which the soldier gave me, I should not have believed that they had really occurred, and that I had seen them and taken part in them. It seemed to me that I was close to my home, that I should soon come to the combe country, where the Gara runs down the valley to the sea, passing the slate quarry, so grey against the copse. The road was good enough, though I was not in good trim for walking, after so many days cooped up in the lugger. I stepped forward bravely along a lonely countryside till I saw before me the houses of a town.