in a nervous quake. He wore a heavy pea-jacket,
and, as a smell of hot varnish announced, carried a dark lantern beneath
it. He had strapped this to his waist-belt to leave both hands free.

We lifted the body out and carried it across the meadow, the Vicar
taking the shoulders and I the heels. And now came the real hazard of
the night. If the coastguard or any belated wanderer should blunder
upon us, we stood convicted of kidnapping a corpse, and (as the Vicar
afterwards allowed) there was simply no explanation to be given.
When we gained the orchard and pushed through the broken fence, every
twig that crackled fetched my heart into my mouth: and I drew my first
breath of something like ease when at length, in the withy bed at the
foot of Gunner's Meadow, we laid our burden down behind the ruin of an
old cob-wall and took a short rest before essaying the beach.

But that breath was hardly drawn before I laid a warning hand on the
Vicar's sleeve. Someone was coming down the cliff-track: the
coastguard, no doubt. He halted on the wooden footbridge, struck a
match and lit his pipe. From our covert not ten yards away I saw the
glow on his face as he shielded the match in the hollow of both his
hands. It was the coastguard--a fellow called Simms. His match lit, I
expected him to resume his walk. But no: he loitered there. For what
reason, on earth? Luckily his back was towards us now: but to me, as I
cowered in the plashy mud and prayed against sneezing, it seemed that
the damnatory smell of the Vicar's lantern must carry for half a mile at
least.

And now I heard another footstep, coming from the westward, and a loose
stone kicked over the cliff. Another coastguard! The pair hailed each
other, and stood on the footbridge talking together for a good three
minutes.

Then to our infinite relief they parted with a "So long!" and each made
slowly off by the way he had come. It was just a meeting of the patrols
after all.

Another ten minutes must have gone by before we dared to lift the body
again: and after a nervous while in crossing the beach we found the boat
left high and dry by the ebb, and had an interminable job to get her
down to the water without noise. I climbed in and took the oars: the
Vicar lifted a sizeable stone on board and followed.

"The Carracks," he whispered. "That's the spot he named to me."

So I pulled out towards the Carracks, which are three points of rock
lying just within t