It was almost the end of their visit to the seaside. They had turned themselves out of doors while their trunks were being packed, and strolled over the Downs towards the dull evening sea. The tide was dead low under the chalk cliffs, and the little wrinkled waves grieved along the sands up the coast to Newhaven and down the coast to long, grey Brighton, whose smoke trailed out across the Channel.
They walked to The Gap, where the cliff is only a few feet high.
A windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the edge of it. The Coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an old ship's figurehead of a Turk in a turban stared at them over the wall.
'This time tomorrow we shall be at home, thank goodness,' said Una. 'I hate the sea!'
'I believe it's all right in the middle,' said Dan. 'The edges are the sorrowful parts.'
Cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, levelled his telescope at some fishing-boats, shut it with a click and walked away. He grew smaller and smaller along the edge of the cliff, where neat piles of white chalk every few yards show the path even on the darkest night.
'Where's Cordery going?'said Una.
'Half-way to Newhaven,'said Dan. 'Then he'll meet the Newhaven coastguard and turn back. He says if coastguards were done away with, smuggling would start up at once.'
A voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing:
'The moon she shined on Telscombe Tye -
On Telscombe Tye at night it was -
She saw the smugglers riding by, A very pretty sight it was!'
Feet scrabbled on the flinty path. A dark, thin-faced man in very neat brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came up, followed by Puck.
'Three Dunkirk boats was standin' in!' the man went on.
'Hssh!' said Puck. 'You'll shock these nice young people.'
'Oh! Shall I? Mille pardons!' He shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears - spread his hands abroad, and jabbered in French.
'No comprenny?' he said. 'I'll give it you in Low German.' And he went off in another language, changing his voice and manner so completely that they hardly knew him for the same person.
But his dark beady-brown eyes still twinkled merrily in his lean face, and the children felt that they did not suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches, and broad-brimmed hat. His hair was tied 'in a short pigtail which danced wickedly when he turned his head.
'Ha' done!' said Puck, laughing. 'Be one thing or t'other, Pharaoh - French or English or German - no great odds which.'
'Oh, but it is, though,' said Una quickly. 'We haven't begun German yet, and - and we're going back to our French next week.'
'Aren't you English?' said Dan. 'We heard you singing just now.'
'Aha! That was the Sussex side o' me. Dad he married a French girl out o' Boulogne, and French she stayed till her dyin' day. She was an Aurette, of course. We Lees mostly marry Aurettes.
Haven't you ever come across the saying:
'Aurettes and Lees, Like as two peas.
What they can't smuggle, They'll run over seas'?
'Then, are you a smuggler?' Una cried; and, 'Have you smuggled much?'said Dan.
Mr Lee nodded solemnly.
'Mind you,' said he, 'I don't uphold smuggling for the generality o' mankind - mostly they can't make a do of it - but I was brought up to the trade, d'ye see, in a lawful line o' descent on' - he waved across the Channel -'on both sides the water. 'Twas all in the families, same as fiddling. The Aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across from Boulogne, and we Lees landed it here and ran it up to London Town, by the safest road.'
'Then where did you live?' said Una.
'You mustn't ever live too close to your business in our trade.
We kept our little fishing smack at Shoreham, but otherwise we Lees was all honest cottager folk - at Warminghurst under Washington - Bramber way - on the old Penn estate.'
'Ah!' said Puck, squatted by the windlass. 'I remember a piece about the Lees at Warminghurst, I do:
'There was never a Lee to Warminghurst That wasn't a gipsy last and first.
I reckon that's truth, Pharaoh.'
Pharaoh laughed. 'Admettin' that's true,' he said, 'my gipsy blood must be wore pretty thin, for I've made and kept a worldly fortune.'
'By smuggling?' Dan asked.
'No, in the tobacco trade.'
'You don't mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and be a tobacconist!' Dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh.
'I'm sorry; but there's all sorts of tobacconists,' Pharaoh replied. 'How far out, now, would you call that smack with the patch on her foresail?' He pointed to the fishing-boats.
'A scant mile,' said Puck after a quick look.
'Just about. It's seven fathom under her - clean sand. That was where Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from Boulogne, and we fished 'em up and rowed 'em into The Gap here for the ponies to run inland. One thickish night in January of 'Ninety-three, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came over from Shoreham in the smack, and we found Uncle Aurette and the L'Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with New Year's presents from Mother's folk in Boulogne. I remember Aunt Cecile she'd sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which I put on then and there, for the French was having their Revolution in those days, and red caps was all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us that they had cut off their King Louis' head, and, moreover, the Brest forts had fired on an English man-o'-war. The news wasn't a week old.
'"That means war again, when we was only just getting used to the peace," says Dad. "Why can't King George's men and King Louis' men do on their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?"
'"Me too, I wish that," says Uncle Aurette. "But they'll be pressing better men than themselves to fight for 'em. The press-gangs are out already on our side. You look out for yours. "
