Tregenna was near enough to the gig to hail the men in charge of it, and these hurried up to the spot without delay.
They knew of the raid, but not of the murder. During the lieutenant's absence a suspicious-looking sloop had been sighted at anchor some little distance away. A watch had been kept upon her from the cutter, and a boat seen to push off and make for the marshes.
The cutter's crew had manned a boat and given chase, only to find that they had been drawn off in pursuit of a decoy craft, containing nothing contraband, while the men remaining on the cutter had the mortification to see a second boat, piled high with kegs and full of smugglers armed to the teeth, row up the creek, land crew and cargo, and then return to the sloop, exchanging shots with the cutter's men, without effect on either side.
The cutter's men, however, had seen nothing of the murder, for the irregularities of the ground and the scrubby undergrowth of gorse and bramble had hidden the struggle from their sight, though, but for this circumstance, the spot would have been within the range of their telescopes.
