He set down his lanthorns, two about five feet apart, lit them all, and held the third on the top of his head as he stood between the others, so that from seaward the lights would have appeared like a triangle.
It seemed all done in such a matter of course way that it was evident that Ram was accustomed to the task, and supporting the lanthorn on his head, first with one and then with the other hand, he went on whistling softly an old west country air, thinking the while about Sir Risdon and Lady Graeme, and about how poor they were, and how much better it was to live at a farmhouse where there was always plenty to eat, and where his father could go fishing in the lugger when he liked, and how he could farm and smuggle, and generally enjoy life.
"That's good half an hour," said Ram, lowering his lanthorn, opening the door, and puffing out the candle, afterwards serving the others the same.
_Whew_--_whew_--_whew_--_whew_! A peculiar whishing of wings from far overhead, as a flock of birds flew on through the darkness of the night, following the wonderful instinct which made them take flight to other lands.
"Wasn't geese; and I don't think it was ducks," said the lad to himself, as he slung his darkened lanthorns together, and began to descend as coolly as if he had been provided by nature with wings to guard him against a fall down the cliff.
"Wonder whether they saw the lights," he said to himself.

"Not much good showing them, if they were in the fog." He went on, gradually approaching the mist which lay below him, and at last was descending the zigzag path with the stars blotted out, and the tiny drops of moisture gathering on his eyelashes, finding his way more by instinct than sight.
"Come in with the tide 'bout 'leven," said Ram, as he still descended the face of the cliff, then the path, and at last was well down in the little valley, whose mouth seemed to have been filled up in some convulsion of nature by a huge wall of cliff, under which the streamlet which ran from the hills had mined its way.
As soon as he was down on level ground, the boy started for home at a trot, gave the lanthorns into his mother's hands, and, after a brief inquiry as to his father's whereabouts, he started off once more.
The part of the cliff for which he made was exactly opposite Sir Risdon's old house, and to a stranger about the last place where it would be deemed possible for a smuggler to land his cargo.
Hence the successful landing of many a boat-load, which had been scattered the country through.
For there, at the foot of the cliff, lay a natural platform or pier, almost as level as if it had been formed for a landing stage.

The deep water came right up to its edge, and here, at a chosen time of tide, a lugger could lie close in, and her busy crew and their helpmates land keg and bale upon the huge ledge,--a floor of intensely hard stone, full of great ammonites, many a couple of feet across, monsters of shell-fish, which had gradually settled down and died, when the stone in which they lay had been soft mud.
Revenue boats had of course, from time to time, as they explored the coast, noted this natural landing-place, but as there was only a broad step twenty feet above this to form another platform, and then the cliffs ran straight up two hundred feet slightly inclined over toward the sea, and the existence of even a moderate surf would have meant wreck, it was never even deemed likely that there was danger here, and consequently it was left unwatched.
The smugglers had a different opinion of the place, and on Ram reaching the spot he was in nowise surprised to find a group of about thirty men on the cliff, clustered about the end of a spar, whose butt was run down into a hole in the rock, which lay a foot beneath the turf, and at whose end, as it rose at an angle, was a pulley block and rope run through ready for use should the lugger come.
"Where's father ?" whispered Ram to one of the men, who looked curiously indistinct amid the fog.
"Here, boy," was whispered close to his ear.

"Going down to help ?" "May I, father ?" Shackle grunted; and, after speaking to one of the men, Ram took hold of the loop at the end of the rope, thrust a leg through, held on tightly, and, after the word was given, swung himself off into the fog.
The well-oiled wheel ran fast, and it was a strange experience that of gliding rapidly down and steadily turning round and round with the thick darkness all around, and nothing to show that he who descended was not stationary.

The peril of such a run down would have appeared the greater, could he who descended have seen how the rope was allowed to run.