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My hand was on the gate when I heard footsteps, and July Constantine came running down the hill, her red cloak flapping and her hair powdered with mist.

“Hullo!” said I, “nothing wrong, I hope?” She turned a white, distraught face to me in the dawn.

“Yes, yes! All is wrong! I saw the soldiers coming–I heard them a mile away, and sent up the rocket from the church-tower. But the lugger stood in–they must have seen!–she stood in, and is right under Sheba Point now–and he–“

I whistled. “This is serious. Let us run out towards the point; we– you, I mean–may be in time to warn them yet.”

So we set off running together. The morning breeze had a cold edge on it, but already the sun had begun to wrestle with the bank of sea-fog. While we hurried along the cliffs the shoreward fringe of it was ripped and rolled back like a tent-cloth, and through the rent I saw a broad patch of the cove below; the sands (for the tide was at low ebb) shining like silver; the dragoons with their greatcoats thrown back from their scarlet breasts and their accoutrements flashing against the level rays. Seaward, the lugger loomed through the weather; but there was a crowd of men and black boats–half a score of them–by the water’s edge, and it was clear to me at once that a forced run had been at least attempted.

I had pulled up, panting, on the verge of the cliff, when July caught me by the arm.

“The sand!”

She pointed; and well I remember the gesture–the very gesture of the hand in the fresco–the forefinger extended, the thumb shut within the palm. “The sand. . . he told me . . .”

Her eyes were wide and fixed. She spoke, not excitedly at all, but rather as one musing, much as she had answered Laquedem on the morning when he waved the daisy-chain before her.

I heard an order shouted, high up the beach, and the dragoons came charging down across the sand. There was a scuffle close by the water’s edge; then, as the soldiers broke through the mob of free-traders and wheeled their horses round, fetlock deep in the tide, I saw a figure break from the crowd and run, but presently check himself and walk composedly towards the cliff up which climbed the footpath leading to Porthlooe. And above the hubbub of oaths and shouting, I heard a voice crying distinctly, “Run, man! Tis after thee they are! Man, go faster!”

Even then, had he gained the cliff-track, he might have escaped; for up there no horseman could follow. But as a trooper came galloping in pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude; of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at full length on the sand.

The report woke the girl as with the stab of a knife. Her cry–it pierces through my dreams at times–rang back with the echoes from the rocks, and before they ceased she was halfway down the cliffside, springing as surely as a goat, and, where she found no foothold, clutching the grass, the rooted samphires and sea pinks, and sliding. While my head swam with the sight of it, she was running across the sands, was kneeling beside the body, had risen, and was staggering under the weight of it down to the water’s edge.

“Stop her!” shouted Luke, the riding-officer. “We must have the man! Dead or alive, we must have’n!”

She gained the nearest boat, the free-traders forming up around her, and hustling the dragoons. It was old Solomon Tweedy’s boat, and he, prudent man, had taken advantage of the skirmish to ease her off, so that a push would set her afloat. He asserts that as July came up to him she never uttered a word, but the look on her face said “Push me off,” and though he was at that moment meditating his own escape, he obeyed and pushed the boat off “like a mazed man.” I may add that he spent three months in Bodmin Gaol for it.