Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/105

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An Ugly Customer.
99

stumbled and fell over a stone, spraining his ankle in the fall.

He got up, turned once upon his foes, with a last vicious blow of his cutlass, which inflicted a nasty cut on the forearm of one of the revenue-men, and yelled out—

"Off, mates, off! Game's played!"

Then there was a stampede. The smugglers threw away such weapons as they found cumbersome, and took to flight with as much vigor as they had shown in the fight. Making for the dell at the bottom, Ben the Blast, the lithe, pimply-faced Bill, and two others who were evidently seamen, made for their boats, which, still half-full of the cargo they had been in the act of landing when they were disturbed by the revenue-men, was lying snug among the rocks in charge of a lad.

The tall, thin man in the rug-coat, with the rest of his companions, went up the slope in a northeasterly direction, towards the road.

As they were all far nimbler of foot over the ground, which they knew well, than were their opponents, Lieutenant Tregenna stopped the pursuit of the smugglers when he saw how