am simply all amazement, Mr. Sidmouth,” I rejoined, “that so much brandy exists. There must be enough in those waggons to keep London afloat for a year!”
“Or the members of White's,7 at the very least,” the gentleman replied ironically.
“And what organisation! What dispatch! The Royal Navy should observe these fellows’ methods, the better to order their gunnery crews!”
“See there, the one in the blue cap, who stands aloof along the shoreline?” Mr. Sidmouth's face moved closer to my own, and his left arm extended before my nose, the better to distinguish his object. “He is Davy Forely, this crew's lander; and a better lander is not to be found along the entire Dorset coast.”
“And what, pray, is a lander?”
“The fellow employed by the smuggling captain to organise the men on shore,” Mr. Sidmouth said patiently. “He it is that recruits them, and pays them, and makes certain they are loyal to the game.”
“I had not realised it to be so sophisticated a profession, as to admit of hierarchies,” I replied. “Your knowledge of the whole can hardly be to your credit”
He looked at me with some surprise. “I have known these men some few years, and may call them the most honest band of rogues in the entire Kingdom. Indeed, I have had occasion to depend upon their very efficiency and organisation. They have served my ends whenever needed, and saved my life more than once; and 1 should be churlish indeed, did I not offer them the praise that is their due.”
“Mr. Sidmouth—” I began, in some perturbation at the import of his words; but my speech was stopped in my mouth, by the appearance on the shingle of a gentleman in a good blue coat, who leaned upon a cane, and observed the proceedings with an air of satisfaction—Captain Fielding, without a doubt, and beside him in the darkling dawn, a stranger to my sight—a short, spare man of wizened appearance, and heavy spectacles, and a protruding lower lip, whose gaze was bent upon the shore's activity with the bulbous intensity of a frog's. I had barely noted the Captain's arrival, in the company of this rare fellow, when the latter raised his arm as though in prearranged signal, and with a cry to harrow the bones of the very dead, a company of dragoons in the bright-hued uniform of the Crown descended upon the beach, bayonets extended, pell-mell into the crowd of burdened men.
“Good Lord!” 1 cried, forgetting myself in the tumult of the moment, “they shall be overrun!”
Sparing neither an oath nor a moment's hesitation, Mr. Sidmouth unloosed his horse, sprang upon its noble back, and threw himself down the Cobb to the shoreline's edge, his black hair streaming behind him. Full into the swarm of dragoons and struggling men he rode, lashing to the left and right with his crop. I stood open-mouthed upon The Walk, aghast at his activity; for the King's men were armed, and I assumed that Sidmouth was not, any more than the smugglers themselves should bear fire-arms—for to do so, I knew, was punishable by death. Clubs only they had in defence of their illegal trade, and these they brandished; but the threat of ball and powder proved too much, and even the hardiest of the lander's crew were soon forced to submit, and shuffled downcast from the surf past the triumphant Captain Fielding. I observed that result of the melee only at its close, however; for I confess the first object of my eyes was Geoffrey Sidmouth and the progress of his plunging horse.
He forged a path through the tumult, and rode to where the lander, Davy Forely, stood, shouting orders to his routed men; and in an instant, had grasped the fellow's shirt back and heaved him behind. With a cry and a lash, the stallion sprang forward, and broke from the chaotic scene; but Sidmouth was not to be let slip so easily. Captain Fielding had observed his course, and now harried a party of three dragoons to spring to the pursuit; and with weapons lowered and animal yells loosed from their lips, the men closed in upon the horse's hindquarters. Forely shouted, and kicked at the faces of the pursuing dragoons; the stallion screamed and reared as Sidmouth struggled with the reins; and as I watched, the master of High Down turned in the saddle, pulled a revolver from his coat, and aimed it, thankfully, in the air. A single ball was fired, and resounded above