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.

She dropped with her burden against the stern sheets, but leapt up instantly and had the oars between the thole-pins almost as the boat floated.  She pulled a dozen strokes, and hoisted the main-sail, pulled a hundred or so, sprang forward and ran up the jib.  All this while the preventive men were straining to get off two boats in pursuit; but, as you may guess, the free-traders did nothing to help and a great deal to impede.  And first the crews tumbled in too hurriedly, and had to climb out again (looking very foolish) and push afresh, and then one of the boats had mysteriously lost her plug and sank in half a fathom of water.  July had gained a full hundred yards’ offing before the pursuit began in earnest, and this meant a good deal.  Once clear of the point the small cutter could defy their rowing and reach away to the eastward with the wind just behind her beam.  The riding-officer saw this, and ordered his men to fire.  They assert, and we must believe, that their object was merely to disable the boat by cutting up her canvas.

Their first desultory volley did no damage.  I stood there, high on the cliff, and watched the boat, making a spy-glass of my hands.  She had fetched in close under the point, and gone about on the port tack—­the next would clear—­when the first shot struck her, cutting a hole through her jib, and I expected the wind to rip the sail up immediately; yet it stood.  The breeze being dead on-shore, the little boat heeled towards us, her mainsail hiding the steerswoman.