It was useless to pursue the smugglers any longer, and equally useless to make any plans for seizing them on land on their way back to the sloop. As they had friends all along the coast, it was very certain that they would make no attempt to re-embark from the beach at Hastings, but would reach the ship from some other point of the shore.
All that Tregenna could do, therefore, was to seize the boat they had left upon the beach, and then to return to the cutter. Here he learnt that the sloop had sailed away under cover of the mist, so that there was nothing for it but to take their chance of falling in with her crew on their way back to her.
When night came on, therefore, a couple of boats, with Tregenna in one of them, left the cutter and cruised about, the one on the
