"The Lost Middy" (continued 4)

Chapter Seventeen.

The next morning one of the first things that saluted Aleck’s eyes on making his way up to the look-out on the cliff, was the sloop-of-war about a couple of miles out, sailing very slowly along, followed at a short distance by the Revenue cutter, and the lad had not been watching five minutes before he became aware of the fact that Ness Dunning’s work in the garden was at a standstill, that individual being laid flat upon his chest watching the vessels’ movements through a piece of pipe.

Away to the right on the cliffs, dotted about which lay Eilygugg, there was a white speck here and a blue speck there, and a little more intent gazing proved to the lad that there was another speck upon the edge of the farthest cliff in view.

“Women on the look-out to give warning to the smugglers,” thought Aleck, and he hurried back to see if his uncle was down, and if he were not to return to the cliff-top with the glass.

But the captain was just descending, and his first words were:

“That’s right, my boy; let’s have breakfast. By the way, did you get my paper?”

This started the lad, who was crammed with his news, which he hurriedly made known.

“Humph!” said the old man. “Rather a lively experience for you, my lad; but you must be careful, for I don’t want to have you in trouble over helping smugglers to escape.”

“No, uncle, of course not,” said Aleck; “but do you think I did wrong?”

“Certainly, my boy. This fellow—ill-conditioned fellow Megg—was fighting against the law. He was doubtless there on some business connected with smuggling, and nearly got caught by the press-gang—an institution I do not admire, but those in authority consider it a necessity for the supply of the Navy. Keep away from all these worries, and as much as possible from Rockabie and its young ruffians.”

“Yes, uncle; but I really did not seek to be amongst all that business in Rockabie yesterday,” pleaded Aleck.

“Of course not, my boy, and you need not look so penitent. The law’s the law, of course, but I’m afraid if I had been appealed to as you were last night I should have done the same, and given the scoundrel a good talking to as I brought him away. There, have no more to do with it, and keep out of sight if there are boats landed, as there most probably will be, to make a search.”

“But suppose the officers land and know me again, uncle?”

“There, there, I’m just in the midst of a tiresomely intricate chapter of my book, and don’t want to have my attention taken off.”

“No, uncle, of course not; but if the officers and men know me again?”

“Why, let them, my lad. You were doing no harm, and they can do you none. Now let’s finish our breakfast.”

“Shall I stay in, uncle?” said Aleck. “Tom Bodger slept down in the boat last night, and I wanted to take him some breakfast.”

“Go and take it then, of course.”

“And then stay in?”

“No, no; nonsense. Now don’t bother me any more.”

“I won’t get into any trouble,” Aleck said to himself, as he hurried out, armed with two huge sandwiches and a mug of well-sweetened coffee, with which he got on pretty well going through the garden, hardly spilling a drop, till he was startled by the voice of the gardener, saying, from the other side, in anticipation:

“Thankye, Master Aleck. That’s very good of yer.”

That startling made the lad half stop, and about a tablespoonful of the hot preparation flew out on to the path. But Aleck paid no attention, not even turning his head, but increasing his pace, with the mug troubling him a good deal in his efforts to preserve the liquid in a state of equilibrium in a rapidly descending and very slippery and uneven rocky path.

“I daresay you’d like it,” muttered Aleck, as he hurried on, followed directly after by:

“I’m over here, Master Aleck.”

“Thank you for the information, Ness, but they say none are so deaf as those who will not hear.”

At the next zigzag of the path he was out of sight and hearing, and a few minutes later close upon the niche devoted to his boat, with the big sandwiches complete, and quite three parts of the coffee in the mug.

“Sorry to have been so long, Tom,” he cried, breathlessly, “but here you—”

Aleck was going to say are, but he felt that it would not be correct, for Tom was not there, nor anywhere within sight down the narrow waterway in the direction of the sea. He had left tokens of his presence in the shape of tidy touches, for the boat tackle had all been taken out and stowed away in the overhanging cavernous part, and the boat lay ready for any amount of necessary repairs, for, in spite of the sailor’s declaration the previous evening, she had been leaking to such an extent during the night since she had been tied up, that she was one quarter full of water.

“Why, he ought to have stopped to mend the hole properly. Seen the men-o’-war coming, I suppose, and gone back to Rockabie so as not to be found if the sailors come searching here. But how stupid! What am I to do with this coffee and bacon?”

A moment was sufficient for his decision, and he turned and hurried back, made straight for the tool-house, where he placed the mug on the bench, with the sandwiches carefully balanced across. Then, carefully keeping out of the gardener’s sight till the last minute, he turned down a path which led him near, and then, putting his hands to his lips, he shouted:

“Ness!”

“Yes, Master Aleck,” came directly from where the man was making believe to have been busy for hours.

“I’ve put some coffee and something to eat in the tool-shed,” bellowed Aleck. “Let him think what he likes,” he muttered, as he ran back indoors, obtained the glass, and was off again to make for the cliff and watch the proceedings of the men-o’-war.

Their proceedings seemed to be nil, for both vessels were hove to, and after watching them for a few minutes by means of the glass, Aleck closed it, and hung about, undecided what to do.

A minute later he had made up his mind, for the cave in which the smugglers’ boats lay drawn up attracted him, and he was level with the cottages and preparing to descend when it occurred to him that he had better not go, for if Eben had been suspicious of his visit and ready to think him guilty of giving information to the press-gang people and Revenue men, it was quite possible that others there might be the same, while doubtless the women who had lost son, husband, or father during the past night would be in no pleasant temper to encounter.

So instead of descending, Aleck went on in the direction of the great gap in the cliff where he had had so exciting an encounter with the smuggler, intending to make for the shelf again so as to sit down and watch the sloop and cutter, but only to find when he reached the place, that the view in that direction was cut off by towering rocks.

Consequently he climbed back, went round the head of the deep combe, and crept round to the other side, mounted to the top, and then stood looking down into another of the great rifts in the coast-line, one which had perpendicular sides, the haunt of wild fowl, going sheer down to the water, which here came several hundred yards right into the land.

There were plenty of capital places here where a strong-headed person could go and perch and excite no more notice than a sea-bird. They were what ordinary inshore folk would have called “terribly dangerous,” but such an idea never occurred to Aleck, who selected one of the most risky, in a spot where the vast wall where he stood was gashed by a great crack, which allowed of a descent of some thirty feet to a broad ledge littered by the preenings of the sea-birds, which seemed, though none were present, to have made it their home.

It was a delightful spot for anyone who could climb to it without growing giddy; but there was no going farther, for the angle of the ledge was quite straight, and when the lad peered over he was looking straight into the gurgling, foaming and fretting water a hundred feet below.

“What a boat cove that would have made,” he thought, “if there were not so many sharp rocks rising from the bottom! I shouldn’t like to try and take my kittiwake in there, big as it is.”

The gloomy place, with its black shadowy niches and caves at the surface of the water, had a strange fascination for him. In fact, with its solemn twilight and irregular crag, arch and hollow, it looked quite an ideal entrance to some mermaid city such as is described by the poets who deal in fable.

But there were the two little men-o’-war to watch, and Aleck drew back a step or two from the edge to select a comfortable seat, where the colour of the rock which rose up behind was likely to assimilate with his garments and not throw him up as a plainly-seen watcher if a telescope were directed shoreward from one of the vessels.

“I wonder whether the smugglers ever come here,” thought Aleck, as he looked at the face of the rock in a spot that just suited his purpose; and then he laughed to himself and felt no doubt at all, for there, just level with his face, and about eighteen inches within a crack in the rock, a shabby old horn lanthorn was wedged, and just below it was a tinder-box and a square wide-mouthed bottle, well corked, evidently to protect its contents from the spray which would come rushing up from below in a storm, the contents being so many thin slips of wood, whose sharply-pointed ends had been dipped in molten brimstone.

“One of their look-outs,” he said to himself, as he turned again to sit down, but only to start and crouch upon his knees in surprise; for close up to the rock wall, half hidden by a tuft of sea-pink and grey sea holly, was a very old ragged black silk neckerchief, folded and creased as if lately torn off, and bearing strange rusty dark stains, dry and unpleasant-looking, and with very little consideration Aleck settled in his own mind that, if it were not the kerchief Tom had torn from his neck to wind round the smuggler’s wound, it was as like it as could be.

It did not look a nice thing to take up and handle, but the lad bent lower, before rising up to say, decisively:

“It must be, I’m sure, for I almost seem to know the holes. Then Eben must have been here this morning watching for the press-gang people.”

Another thought flashed across the lad’s brain directly:

“Perhaps he’s close by somewhere, watching me.”

This thought produced a very uncomfortable feeling, and Aleck was divided between two forces which pulled different ways. One was to—as Tom Bodger called it—look out for squalls, the other to sit down quite calm and unconcerned to watch the vessels.

“I can’t help it if Eben does fancy I’m watching his proceedings; he must feel that I should be longing to know what is going on. No, after last night I’m sure he won’t think I should make signals to the ships. Why should I? There’s nothing to signal about.”

He focussed and re-focussed the glass, and held its larger end towards the sloop and placed one eye at the little orifice; but the left would not close and the right would not look at the sloop, but persisted in rolling about in every direction in search of Eben, who, the boy felt certain now, must be crouching back in one of the rugged clefts watching every movement he made.

Aleck did the best he could to look calm and unconcerned, but anyone who had seen him from near at hand would have pronounced it as being a dismal failure.

Then all at once he started. Down went the glass, and he craned forward towards the edge of the shelf to look down, for all at once there was a hoarse rumbling sound and a tremendous plash and crash as if a mass of rock had fallen from somewhere beneath him right into the rock-strewn gully below.

He could not resist the desire to lie down upon his breast and edge himself forward till his face was over the edge and he could look right down into the water, which was all in motion, swaying and eddying, foaming round the half-submerged blocks of weed-hung stone, and behaving generally according to its custom as the tide went and came, for these chasms displayed little change, the water being very deep and never leaving any part of the bottom bare.

There was nothing fresh to see, and after a time the lad drew back, to resume his old attitude with the glass to his eye.

But he had hardly settled down again before he experienced a slight quivering sensation, as if the cliff had suddenly received a blow, while directly after there was a deep roar as of stones falling along some vast slope. Then once more silence, with the water whispering and gurgling far below.

“Part of the cliff given way,” thought Aleck, as he called to mind places here and there where masses of the rocky rampart which guarded the western shores had evidently fallen, and about which he had heard traditionary stories. But these falls had taken place in far distant times. No one that he had heard speak of them could go farther back than chronicling the event as something of which “my grandfather heered tell.”

Aleck thought no more of the sounds and went on watching the two vessels, till suddenly they seemed to be doing something in the way of action. A boat was lowered from each, and the lad’s glass was powerful enough to enable him to make out the faces of the officers in the stern-sheets, one of whom was the midshipman who had charge of the boat at Rockabie pier.

Aleck watched the boats rowing shoreward and separating after a time, one of the sloop’s making for the Eilygugg cove, the other rowing in the direction of the gap which led up to the depression in which lay the Den.

Feeling that he would like to be at home if the boat entered their private chasm, as the lad dubbed it, he turned back along the cliff and reached the garden so as to descend to the mooring-place just in time to see the cutter’s boat framed in the opening, the dark rocks round and above, and the little craft floating upon a background of opalescent sea and sky.

“They can’t have come right in,” thought Aleck, and after a time he made for the cliff again to get near the edge and look down, in time to see that both boats were being rowed back to their respective vessels.

An hour after they were slowly gliding away in the direction of Rockabie, their examination having been of the most perfunctory kind.

Chapter Eighteen.

“No, Master Aleck, not gone, as you may say, right off,” replied Tom Bodger, a few days later, as he adzed and planed and hammered away at the kittiwake down in front of the natural boat-house. “They’re a-dodging of it, strikes me. King’s skippers is artful when they wants men. They just got enough of that smuggling lot aboard the sloop to make the cap’n hungry for more, and, you mark my words, he’ll keep away so as to make the likely ones think they’re safe, and then there’ll come a night when they’ll find they arn’t.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Tom,” said Aleck, opening a fresh packet of glistening golden-hued copper nails. “I don’t believe the press-gang will come again.”

“All right, Master Aleck, you go on thinking they won’t, and I’ll go on thinking they will, and let’s see who’s right.”

“But what makes you suspicious, Tom?”

“Old sperience, sir,” said the man, with a grim smile. “I ’member how we used to pick ’em up aboard the Hajax—‘our Jacks,’ as the lads used to call her. That’s just how our old skipper used to work it; and if I were Eben Megg and didn’t want to go to sea I should give up smuggling and take to an inland job, where he warn’t known, and then he’d be safe. Ha! Them’s the sort,” he said, taking the fresh nails. “No rusting about them coppery nails.”

“No; but uncle says you’re to be careful and not use so many, for they’re expensive, and you do seem to like to drive in as many as you can.”

“Now, you lookye here, Master Aleck,” said the sailor, solemnly; “a copper nail may mean a man’s life. You put in a hiron one and after a bit the sea water eats it all away. Soon as the nail’s eat away up starts a plank, in goes the water, and before you knows where you are down goes your boat and a man’s drowned. Copper nail costs a ha’penny, p’raps, and if it’s a big ’un, a penny. Well, arn’t a man’s life worth more’n that?”

“Of course; but how long shall you be before you’ve done?”

“Finish this week, sir; and then she’ll last for years. You know how it was; soon as I ripped off that patch we found that a lot of her streaks under the pitch was rotten, and there was nothing for it but to cut a lot away and make a good job of it. Well, sir, we’re making a good job of it, and she’ll be like a noo boat when I’ve done.”

“Of course,” said Aleck; “and uncle said you were to do it thoroughly.”

“And thorough it is,” said Tom. “I’ve took a lot o’ time, but there’s been every bit to make good. Let’s see; this makes a week and three days I’ve been coming over reg’lar.”

“Yes, Tom,” said Aleck, laughing; “and what do you think Ness says?”

“Dunno, Master Aleck,” said the sailor, passing his hand, as if lovingly, over the well-smoothed sweet-smelling wood he was putting into the boat. “Wants some beer?”

“Oh, of course,” said Aleck; “but he said he could have mended the boat up in half the time.”

“Ah, he would,” said Tom, drily. “Done it in two days, maybe, and first time she was out in bad weather the sea would undo all his work in quarter the time. Won’t do, Master Aleck; boat-building’s boat-building, and it’s all the same as ship-building—it means men’s lives, and them who scamps work like this ought to be flogged. Our old chips aboard the Hajax, as I worked with as mate, used to say precious ugly things about bad boat-building, and he’d say what he’d do to him as risked men’s lives by bad work. He taught me, Master Aleck, and I feel like him. I’d rather be paid a score o’ shillings for doing a fortnight’s good work than have it for doing a week’s; and I’m going to drive in as many o’ these here best copper nails as I thinks’ll be good for the boat, and you’re going to hold my big hammer agen their heads while I clinch ’em. Then I shall feel as the boat’s as safe as hands can make it. And, as I said afore, if I was Eben Megg, I’d drop the smuggling and go inland for a bit. That there sloop’ll come into harbour some night when she arn’t expected; you see if she don’t! They was fine young men the skipper got the other night, and I say he’ll try for another haul.”

“And I say,” cried Aleck, “that if he does send his men he’ll be disappointed, for Eben and the other smugglers will be too foxy to let themselves be surrounded as the men were at Rockabie the other night.”

“Well, Master Aleck, so much the better for them.”

Then Tom began hammering and clinching the soft copper nails as if he loved his work, and as soon as the sun went down started off to trudge across the moor to Rockabie, taking his time over the task and looking as cheerful at the end as he did at the beginning of the long day.

Aleck had worked pretty hard, too, in the hot sun, and he was so drowsy that night that he was glad enough to see his uncle, wearied out with the writing, which seemed as if it would never come to an end, begin to nod and doze, and suddenly rise up and say:

“Let’s go to bed!”

Aleck hardly knew how he got undressed, but he did afterwards recall going to the fully-open window and looking out at the dull night, as he drank in the soft cool air, which seemed so welcome after a still, sultry day.

Then he was asleep, dreaming of nothing, till about midnight, when his brain became active and he fancied that he was back in the darkness by the unlaunched boat at Rockabie, growing wildly excited as he listened to the shouting and scuffling up one of the narrow lanes, followed by firing and what seemed to be either an order or a cry for help.

The next moment the sleeper was wide awake, listening to what was undoubtedly a shout, and it was followed by another, both far away, but sounding clear on the night air, while from time to time came a dull murmur as of several voices together.

“They’re landing a cargo,” thought Aleck, and with his mind full of luggers lying off the coast, with boats going to and fro to fetch kegs, chests and bales, he hurried on his clothes, dropped from his bedroom window, hurried down the garden to the cliff path, and began to climb up the zigzag.

The landing-place would no doubt be away to the west and below Eilygugg, where the smugglers’ fishing-boats lay, and as soon as he was up out of the depression on to the level down, Aleck went off at a trot to get right at the edge of the cliff, where, unseen, he calculated upon getting a good view of what was going on by the light of, as he expected, many lanthorns.

Before he was half way to the edge a thrill ran through him, for a wild shrieking arose, beginning with one voice, and turning to that of several.

“Oh, it’s a wreck!” cried the lad, wildly, and he hurried on, hoping to reach the way down to the boats and be of some use before it was too late.

But as he ran on with throbbing heart and his breath growing short it gradually dawned upon him that the shrieks were those of angry women raging and storming, and this was soon confirmed, for there was the gruff burr of men’s voices in the distance, followed by a shout or two, which sounded like the orders he had heard in his dream.

“Why, it’s a fight,” he cried, half aloud. “Tom Bodger’s right; the press-gang has landed again, but, instead of going to Rockabie, they’ve come here.”

He was as right as Tom Bodger, for at last when he made his way to the edge of the cliff it was to look down on the lanthorns carried by three boats, which were close up to the shingly patch of beach from which the fishing craft put off.

As far as he could make out in the darkness, badly illumined by the lanthorns, there was a desperate struggle going on in the shallow water lying between the shingle and the boats.

For the first few moments it seemed to Aleck in his excitement that the press-gang was being beaten off by the smugglers. Then he was puzzled, for he could hear hoarse shouts and laughter, mingled with shrieks and what seemed to be loud abuse in women’s voices, followed by splashing in the water as of struggles going on again and again.

After the last of these encounters the lights began to move outward in obedience to an order given loudly from one of the boats; the regular dip-dip of oars came up, and then there was a rushing sound and a wild passionate chorus of cries from the shore.

“I know,” panted Aleck, with a feeling of angry indignation attacking him. “They’ve taken and are carrying off some of the men, and the women have been fighting to try and rescue them. Poor things, how horrible, but how brave!”

He had confirmation of his surmises directly after, for there now rose up to his ears a burst of sobbing cries in a woman’s voice, followed by confused eager talk from quite a party, who seemed to be trying to comfort the weeping woman.

For a few moments there was a pause, during which in the deep silence there was the regular dip of oars, and the lanthorns gently rose and fell upon the smooth rollers of the tide. Then there was a cry which went straight to Aleck’s heart, so piteous and wailing were its tones:

“Oh, Eben! Eben! Come back, dear; come back!”

It reached him for whom it was intended, and was answered directly from one of the boats in words which reached Aleck more clearly perhaps then the listeners below him on the shore.

“All right, lass. Cheer up!”

The order had its effect, for a cheer given heartily in women’s voices was the result; but the lad’s thoughts were active.

“Cheer up!” he said to himself. “How can the woman be cheerful with her husband dragged away like that?”

The lights in the boats gradually grew more distant, while Aleck lay thinking what he had better do, for the low eager murmur of voices down below raised a feeling of commiseration in his breast, which made him feel disposed to go down and try to say a few words of comfort to the bereaved women, who had evidently been trying hard to save their husbands. But he felt that he would only be able to act in a poor bungling way and that the smugglers’ people might look upon him as an intruder and a spy. For though the Den was so short a distance from Eilygugg, there had been very little intercourse, and that merely at times when the help of the captain was sought in connection with some injury or disease.

“They would likely enough turn on and begin fiercely at me,” he thought. “I can do no good;” and he lay still, wanting to get away, but afraid to stir lest he should be heard.

“They’ll go soon,” he thought; and he waited patiently, watching the lights gradually getting fainter and fainter as their distance from the shore increased.

But the poor women seemed to have seated themselves just beyond reach of the lapping waves, which kept on breaking regularly in the little cove, and they, too, were watching the boat-lights till the last gleam had died away and all was darkness as far as they could see.

Then a low sobbing was heard, half drowned at times by many voices raised in angry protest, and mingled with threats.

This went on and on, rising, falling, and quite dying out at times, but only to break out again, having a strange effect upon Aleck, who would have given anything to get away unnoticed; but every now and then the silence was so perfect that he felt confident of being heard if he made the slightest movement, and consequently lay still.

“They’d be sure to look upon me as an intruder,” he muttered, “and be ready to resent my being here.”

At last though the silence was broken by the trampling of feet amongst the loose shingle, accompanied by a low murmured conversation, which was continued up the gap and died out finally high up towards the cottages, leaving the way for the listener clear.

Aleck took advantage of this, and, sad at heart, he was going slowly back towards the Den, when suddenly became aware of steps coming from the direction of the smugglers’ scattered patch of cottages.

Whoever it was had approached so near and had come upon him so suddenly that he obeyed his first impulse, which was to say, sharply:

“Who’s that?”

“Eh? That you, Master Aleck?”

“Yes, it is I, Ness. What are you doing out here at this time of night?”

“Mornin’, arn’t it, sir? Same as you, I s’pose. Who was to stop in bed with press-gangs coming and dragging folkses off to sea?”

“Then you heard them?”

“Heerd ’em, yes, sir! I was that feared o’ being took myself that I got into hiding.”

“You were not fighting, then?”

“Me? Fight? Not me! I lay low and listened.”

“The press-gang landed and surprised the smugglers, then?”

“Yes, sir, and they’ve nabbed Eben Megg and six of his mates. Did yer hear the women giving it to the sailors?”

“I heard something of it.”

“They was fighting savage like to save their men, and the sailor chaps was glad enough to get back to their boats; but they took Eben Megg and half a dozen more along with ’em.”

“You seem to know all about it, Ness,” said Aleck, suspiciously.

“Me, Master Aleck? Well, you see, being such near neighbours like I can’t help hearing a deal. But it’s bad work smuggling, and I keep as clear of the folk as I can. Going home to bed?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right, sir. Best place, too, of a night. But how did you know the press-gang was coming?”

“I didn’t know they were coming.”

“But you were theer?” said the old gardener, suspiciously.

“I was there?” said Aleck, “because the noise woke me, coming through my open window.”

“Oh!” said the gardener. “I see.”

The next minute their ways diverged, and Aleck soon after climbed up to his bedroom window, to drop off into a sleep disturbed by fights with press-gangs and smugglers all mixed up into a strange confusion, from which he was glad to awaken and find that he had hardly time to get dressed before his uncle would be down.

Chapter Nineteen.

Captain Lawrence listened with knitted brows to his nephew’s narration of all that had taken place in the night, and shook his head.

“It’s miserable work, my boy,” he said; “so piteous for the poor women. Well, perhaps good will come out of evil, and it may be the breaking up of a notorious smuggling gang.”

It was just as Aleck was finishing his third cup of coffee, which he set down sharply in the saucer, startled by the sudden rush of the gardener to the open window, through which he thrust his head without ceremony.

“Here’s—” he began, excitedly. “Oh!”

For a big heavy hand appeared upon his shoulder, clutching him hard and snatching him away.

“What is the meaning of this, boy?” cried the captain.

Aleck’s head was already out of the window, and he drew it back again to answer:

“A lot of sailors, uncle, and their officer.”

The lad’s words were followed by the appearance of Jane, whose eyes were wide open and staring, her mouth following suit to some extent, so that she had to close her lips before saying:

“Plee, sir, orficer, sir. To see you, sir.”

The captain nodded shortly and rose to go, followed by Aleck, out into the little ball, at whose door a naval officer and a boat’s crew of men were waiting.

“Good morning,” said the officer, shortly; and then turning upon Aleck, “Hallo, young man, I’ve seen you before!”

“Yes, in Rockabie harbour,” said the lad, looking at him wonderingly, while his heart began to beat fast as he glanced at the party of sturdy sailors.

“Ah, to be sure,” said the officer; then to the captain again, “You are aware, I suppose, that we made a descent last night upon your nest of smugglers here.”

“I have just learned, sir, what took place,” said the captain, coldly.

“Of course. Well, sir, in the struggle and after trouble with the women, who resented the taking away of the men, the young officer of the second boat was missed.”

“Not the midshipman who was with your boat the other day?” said Aleck, eagerly.

“Eh? Yes,” cried the officer. “What do you know about him?”

“Only that we had a few words together.”

“And you know that he was missed?”

“I did not know till you told me,” said Aleck.

“Didn’t know, I suppose, that there was that struggle over yonder by the cove last night, eh?”

“Yes,” said Aleck, frankly; “I saw some of it.”

“Ah! Then you were with the smugglers, eh?”

“No,” replied Aleck; and he briefly related his experience, including his being awakened by shots.

“Ah, to be sure,” said the officer; “they’re a nice daring set of scoundrels—fired on the King’s men; but we got the rascals who did. Well, sir, what’s become of our officer?”

“How should I know?” said Aleck, staring.

“You must have seen something of what went on after we started back.”

“No,” said Aleck. “There seemed to be no one there but the women.”

“But you saw them and heard what they said? You heard them talking about him?”

“No, I did not go near the women.”

“Why?” said the officer, sharply.

“Because I was afraid they would think I had something to do with the press-gang coming.”

“Well, he must be found. He’s here somewhere.”

“Is there any possibility of the poor young fellow having been knocked overboard during the struggle?”

“Not the slightest,” replied the officer, shortly. “He may have been knocked down somewhere on the way between the cottages, where we pounced upon the men, and the landing-place. Well, he must be found.”

“Of course,” said the captain, quietly. “You will go up, then, and search the smugglers’ cottages—fishermen they call themselves?”

“We have searched them thoroughly,” said the officer, “and we’ve come across now, sir, to search your place—what do they call it?—the Den.”

Aleck glanced at his uncle’s face, and could see the blood gathering in his cheeks.

“Search my house, sir?” he said. “Are you so mad as to suppose that I should entrap one of the King’s officers?”

“Possibly, sir,” replied the visitor, “on the quid pro quo principle, to hold on ransom. We’ve got some of your friends; you have snatched at one of ours.”

“This is the first time, sir, that I’ve been led to suppose that I was a friend to the smugglers. Eh, Aleck?”

“What nonsense, uncle!” cried the lad, indignantly.

“Oh, indeed, young gentleman!” said the officer, turning upon him sharply. “No friends of yours neither?”

“Certainly not,” cried Aleck.

“Ho! Then, perhaps you will be good enough to explain how it is that the gardener here is the smugglers’ chief assistant in signalling, spying, and warning them?”

“He isn’t,” said Aleck, sharply.

“He is,” said the officer. “What is more, I found that cargoes are run down here in a cove or rift upon your coast, where a handy boat is kept.”

“We’ve got a boat down the rift,” said Aleck.

“Exactly; one that runs to and fro between here and Rockabie.”

“Yes,” said Aleck, mockingly; “to fetch fishing-tackle and grocery—and writing paper; eh, uncle?”

The captain nodded, while the young lieutenant went on:

“And to take messages from here to Rockabie.”

“No,” cried Aleck; but the officer went on, quietly:

“Look here, sir, I am credibly informed that it was your boat that rescued one of the most daring of the smugglers on the night of an encounter we had there—a man whom I was holding with my own hands till I was savagely struck down. It is quite likely that this may be examined into later on, but my business now is to find my messmate. Look here, it will save a good deal of trouble, and make things much easier for you, if you put me up to the place where the prisoner is hidden.”

“Perhaps it would,” said Aleck, firmly now; “but I tell you I know nothing whatever about your young midshipman. If you think he is hidden somewhere here you are quite wrong.”

“Perhaps so,” said the officer, sternly, “but we shall see.”

Then, turning to the captain, he said, shortly:

“I shall have to search your place, sir,” and then rather jeeringly, as if suggesting that it would not matter in the least if the captain objected, he added: “I presume that you will not put difficulties in my way?”

“None whatever, sir,” said the captain. “And as an old commissioned officer in his Majesty’s service should feel it my duty to help in any way I could.”

“Eh? Oh, thank you,” said the officer, changing his manner. “I beg your pardon. I heard the people called you captain, but I supposed that you were captain of some fishing or trading boat.”

The captain bowed coldly.

“Aleck,” he said, “do you know anything about Dunning being intimate with the smugglers?”

“Yes, uncle; I have been suspecting it lately.”

“Oh, Master Aleck!” came from outside. “Me? How can you say such a word! When did you ever know me smuggle anything? Oh, my dear lad, tell the truth; when did you—whenever did you know me smuggle anything?”

“Often,” said Aleck, bluntly.

“What; tea and sperrits and ’bacco and silk?”

“No,” said Aleck; “but fruit.”

“Oh, fruit!” said the gardener, contemptuously. “What’s a bit of fruit?”

“Perhaps you will have my house and grounds searched at once, sir,” said the captain, waving the gardener back. “The house is small, and—”

“Stop a moment, sir,” said the young lieutenant, for such he proved to be; “will you give me your word of honour as an officer and a gentleman that my brother officer is not concealed about your premises?”

“Certainly,” said the captain. “I give you my word of honour that he is not; and I add to it that I have never had any dealings with the smugglers.”

“That is enough, sir. Now, will you tell me where we are to find their hiding-places, for they must have some stowages for the goods they run.”

“I assure you, sir, that I have not the slightest knowledge of any such places. I have often suspected the existence of a cave or caves. Aleck, my boy, do you know of any?”

Aleck turned sharply to speak, and as he did so he caught the gardener’s eyes fixed upon him with a peculiar glare that might have been threatening or imploring, the lad could not tell which; but he spoke out frankly at once:

“No, uncle. I’ve often wondered whether there was a smuggler’s cave, but I never found one.”

“Humph! That seems strange,” said the officer. “You have a boat?”

“Yes, I have a boat.”

“And go coasting and fishing about close in. Do you mean to tell me you never found anything of the kind?”

“Yes.”

“And you never saw a cargo being landed—I mean a cargo of smuggled goods?”

“Never,” said Aleck.

“Then you must have been very unobservant, young gentleman. I presume that you have seen smugglers about here?”

Aleck’s face lit up, and he once more caught Ness’s eyes fixed upon him as he spoke.

“Oh, yes,” he said; “several.”

“And you could direct us to their cottages?”

“I could,” said Aleck, “but I’m not going to.”

“Well done, Master Aleck!” shouted the gardener.

“Silence, sir,” said the captain, sternly. “Go on, Aleck.”

“I’ve no more to say, uncle,” replied the lad, “only that I’m not going to lead people to take and press men by force for sailors. Besides, the lieutenant does not need showing—he has been to the men’s cottages, and taken some of them.”

“To be sure,” said the officer, good-humouredly; “and I don’t want to be hard on you. It is not the thing to ask a gentleman to do. But please understand, sir, that I am not seeking for men to press now, but to find my brother officer who is missing. Can you help me in that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Aleck, frankly; “but I will do all I can.”

“Thank you; that’s right,” said the officer. “Come, Captain Lawrence, we are making some progress after all.”

“I’m glad of it, sir,” replied the captain; “but, tell me, you pressed some men last night?”

“Yes, we got seven sturdy fellows to the boats, in spite of a vigorous resistance.”

“Seven?” said the captain. “Well, surely that must be quite as many as we have living in the little cluster of cliff cottages! Of course there are their wives and children!”

“Yes,” said the lieutenant, drily; “we learned to our cost that they had wives, and strapping daughters too.”

“Then how can it be possible that your brother officer can be here? There is no one to keep him a prisoner.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem likely,” said the officer, in a disappointed tone. “Unless,” he added, “these viragoes of women are keeping him, out of spite.”

“There’s not the slightest probability of that,” said the captain. “I’m afraid, sir, that you will find an accident has befallen him.”

The lieutenant shook his head, and then turned to Aleck.

“You have a boat and a wonderfully retired nook where you keep her! Where is it—down below here?”

“Your men came to the mouth of it last time you were here.”

“What, last night?”

“No, no; a fortnight ago.”

“Ah, yes, I remember. You mean that narrow split in the rock; but surely no boat could go in there?”

“Mine goes in, and out too,” said Aleck; “and it’s nearly as big as yours. But what of that?”

“Is it likely that my brother officer, finding himself left behind, may have hidden himself there?”

“Not a bit likely,” said Aleck; “but, let’s go and see!”

“By all means,” said the captain; and Aleck led them off at once through the sunken garden and down to the slope which led into the chasm.

“My word, what a place!” said the officer, in his admiration. “Wonderful! And this is your boat-house, eh?” he added, when, followed by his boat’s crew, they reached sea level and gazed into the great niche in which the kittiwake was securely moored.

“Not a bad place,” said Aleck; “and it’s easy enough to get in and out when you know how.”

“One moment,” said the officer; “here are plenty of cracks and crevices in the sides of this rift or cave, or whatever you call it, where a fellow might hide. Here, my lads, give a good loud hail or two! Raven—ahoy!”

The hail rang out, the men shouting together, their powerful voices raising up a broadside of echoes as if the shout ran along zigzag to the mouth of the place before the hail passed out to sea, while at the first roar a multitude of sea-birds flung themselves off the shelf and flew up to the surface and away over the cliffs, shrieking and screaming in hundreds to add to the din.

The men shouted again, and as soon as the echoes had died out sent forth a louder roar than ever; but there was no answering cry, and the lieutenant turned disappointed away.

“He is evidently not here,” he said. “Forward, my lads, back up to the house. We’re on the wrong tack, squire,” he continued, speaking to Aleck. “Look here; I’m going back to our boat in the smugglers’ cove to coast along each way as close in as we can get for the rocks. He may have gone off a rock into deep water during one of the scuffles and then swum to some nook or cavern, out of which he can’t get on account of deep water.”

“That seems likely,” said Aleck. “Like me to come and show you some of the caves?”

“Smugglers’ caves?”

“Oh, no; little places where you couldn’t row in, but where anyone might hide.”

“Ah, that’s better,” said the officer. “You’ll do that?”

“Of course I will,” said Aleck; and after a short visit to the house Aleck led the boat’s crew and their leader across the cliff and down the rough descent, feeling greatly relieved on finding that there was not a fisherman’s wife in sight, for he was pretty certain that his appearance in company with their enemies might prove to be a very uncomfortable thing.

In due time the beach was reached, and the keepers of the sloop’s boat backed in to allow the officer and crew to get aboard, after which there was an order or two given, and then they rowed out a short distance and, keeping in as close as possible, visited cave and crevice for about half a mile, landing wherever it was possible, sometimes climbing over weed-hung slimy rocks, sometimes wading, and then returning to continue the search in the opposite direction far past the entrance to the Den, before rowing back after an exhaustive search.

The officer gave the word to stop as the entrance to Aleck’s boat haven was reached, and, under guidance, rowed and poled up till he could land.

“Thank you for all you’ve done, youngster,” said the lieutenant; “it has been a barren search, but I shall give up for to-day. Maybe I shall look you up again. Meantime I hope you’ll keep your ears open, and if you can pick up anything worth having hoist a white tablecloth or sheet on your boat’s mast on the top of the cliff, if it’s by day, and if it’s night, burn one of the blue lights I’ll leave with you. Neither of these things will be fighting against your neighbours the smugglers, but only helping us to find our midshipman and making more friends than you know. You’ll do this for us?”

“Of course,” said Aleck, eagerly.

“Hand out three of those blue lights, coxswain! Next time we come, squire, I’ll bring you a rocket or two. There; thankye, and good day!”

“Good day,” said Aleck; “but can you make your way out?”

“My lads will, never fear,” said the lieutenant, and Aleck stood with the blue lights in his hand, watching the boat till it passed round one of the angles and was out of sight, when he turned round, to find that he was not alone.

“You here, Tom?” he said to the sailor, who was standing in the shadow of the boat haven, close up to the dark rocks.

“Me it is, sir.”

“What is it—any news?”

“Me, sir? No; on’y what I got when I come across to see what was going on about the press-gang coming here. Say, Master Aleck, I told yer so.”

“Yes, Tom, you told me so,” replied the lad, warmly. “There, I’m fagged out; let’s get up to the house. I want some dinner. You want some too, don’t you?”

“Oh, I dunno, sir! I had my braxfus.”

“So did I, Tom, hours and hours ago. What time is it?”

“’Bout four, sir.”

“Late as that? Come and have some dinner with me. It’s a horrible business about that poor midshipman.”

“Ay, ’tis, sir. Smart lad as ever I see.”

“Where do you think he can be?”

“Carried out by the tide, I should say, sir.”

“Oh! Horrible! Then you don’t think the smugglers can have taken him prisoner?”

“Tchah! What could they do with prisoners, Master Aleck? May have given him a crack on the head and knocked him into the water. Easy done in a scrimmage, and nobody none the wiser.”

“But mightn’t he be hid in the smugglers’ cave?”

“Well, he might be, sir, if there is one. If he is he’s shut up tight and they’ve took away them as knows how to get in.”

“Yes,” said Aleck, as they reached the garden and caught sight of the gardener watching them. “I say, Tom, there must be a big cavern somewhere.”

“Very like, sir.”

“You don’t know where it is?”

“Not me, sir.”

“Don’t look that way, but tell me what you think. Isn’t old Ness likely to know?”

“Very likely, sir; but if he did know he wouldn’t tell.”

“Then you think he is mixed up with the smuggling gang?”

“That’s so, sir.”

“Then I’ll make him tell me,” said Aleck, between his teeth.

“Do, sir, for I should like us to find the young gen’leman, he being an officer and me an old Navy man. Make old Ness tell yer. You are good friends with him, arn’t yer?”

“Yes, of course,” said Aleck. “No, of course not,” he cried, angrily, for like a flash came the recollection of the scene that morning, when the gardener had protested against being suspected of having any dealings with such outlawed men. “Oh, Tom, what an unlucky fellow I am!”

“Feel like that, sir?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because you wants yer dinner very bad, Master Aleck. You get indoors and have your salt beef and biscuit, or whatever your Jane has stowed away, and you’ll feel like a noo man.”

Chapter Twenty.

The party from the sloop-of-war came twice, led by the lieutenant, and had long and patient searches with Aleck in their boat ready to follow or lead the men into one or other of the openings in the rocks where the waves ran in with a peculiarly hollow echoing rush at low water, but which were covered deeply at half tide. These chasms were examined diligently, for the lieutenant had noted that the tide was very low when the attack was made. But nothing was discovered.

Aleck noted that the young officer looked very despondent on the second occasion, and the next morning when the lad went down to the smugglers’ cove to meet the boat, which he had sighted from his look-out place on the cliff, where with Tom’s help he had set up a spar ready for signalling, he found another officer in command of a fresh set of men.

The lad met them as a matter of course, feeling that his services would be welcome, but encountered a short, sharp rebuff in the shape of an enquiry as to who he was, and, upon explaining, he was told sharply to go about his business.

“Look here, sir,” said the officer, “I don’t want any natives to lead me on a false scent.”

“Very well,” said Aleck, quietly, and he climbed up the cliff again, and after noting which way the boat’s head was turned he went off beyond the smugglers’ cove and reached the great gap, where he descended to the shelf where he had found the lanthorn and tinder-box.

He had just reached it, when a figure started up and began to hurry inland, just giving him a glimpse of her face before she disappeared among the rocks, and he recognised Eben Megg’s wife.

“Been looking out to sea, poor thing!” thought Aleck. “I’m afraid she’ll watch for a long time before she sees him coming back.”

He forgot the woman again directly in the business of watching the boat, which kept on coming into sight far below and disappearing again, drawing forth the mental remark from Aleck, “Labour in vain,” for he felt that all the openings below where he stood had been thoroughly searched.

Aleck hung about till the afternoon, and saw the boat shoot off from beyond one of the points in the direction of the sloop lying at anchor, and then went home.

The next morning, when he went up to his signalling spar to direct the glass at the sloop, she was not there; but the cutter, which had been absent, lay in about the same place, and after a time the lad made out another boat coming towards the smugglers’ cove.

“A fresh party,” he said to himself. “Well, I should like to help them find the poor fellow, but if they want help they must come and ask me; I’m not going to be snubbed again.”

He closed his glass and struck off by the shortest way across the head of the smugglers’ cove, making once more for the high ground beyond, for it commanded the coast in two directions. But long before he reached his favourite spot he again caught sight of the fluttering blue petticoat of a woman, and saw her hurrying inland.

“Poor woman!” thought Aleck. “She needn’t be afraid of me.”

He kept an eye upon her till she disappeared, and then went on to the niche in the rock face, settled himself down with his glass, and watched the cutter’s boat, which was steadily pulling in. The birds meanwhile kept on flitting down from where they sat in rows along the inaccessible shelves, skimmed over the water, dived, and came up again with small fishes in their beaks, to return to feed the young, which often enough had been carried off by some great gull, one of the many which glided here and there, uttering their peculiarly querulous, mournful cries, so different in tone from the sharp, hearty calls of the larger inland birds.

There were a good many sailing about overhead, Aleck noted, and they were more noisy than usual, and this, judging from old lore which he had picked up from Tom Bodger and the fishermen, he attributed to a coming change in the weather, wind perhaps, when the sea, instead of being soft blue and calm, might be lashed by a storm to send the waves thundering in upon the rocks, to break up into cataracts of broken water and send the glittering foam whirling aloft in clouds.

“No more hunts then,” thought Aleck; and then aloud to a great white-breasted gull which floated overhead, watching him curiously, “Well, what are you looking at? I’ve not come egging now.”

The gull uttered a mournful cry and glided off seaward, to dive down directly after beyond the cliff, its cry sounding distant and faint.

The boat came on nearer and nearer till it, too, disappeared, being hidden by the great bluff to his left.

Then half a dozen more gulls rose up and came skimming along the rugged trough-like depression towards where he sat, with bird-covered ledges to left and right. When they caught sight of him they rose higher with a graceful curve, and began wheeling round, uttering their discordant cries, some of the more daring coming nearer and nearer upon their widespread spotless wings, white almost as snow, till a sway would send one wing down, the other up, giving the looker-on a glimpse of the soft bluish grey of their backs, save in the cases of the larger birds—the great thieves and pirates among the young—which were often black.

There was no boat to watch now, so Aleck, after sweeping the horizon in search of the sloop-of-war, gradually turned the end of his glass inland over the sweep of down and wild moor, till, just as he was in the act of lowering it, he caught sight, some distance off and directly inland, of some object which looked like a short, pudgy, black and white bird sitting upon a rock.

“What’s that?” he said, steadying the glass which had given him the glimpse in passing over it; but, try he would, he could not catch the object again.

“Couldn’t have been a rabbit,” he muttered. “Fancy, perhaps,” and he lowered the glass, to begin closing it as he trusted to his unaided vision and looked in the direction of the grey weathered rocks.

“Why, there it is!” he cried. “It’s a black bird with a white breast. It must be some big kind of puffin sitting with its feathers stuck-up to dry.”

He began to focus the glass once more, and raised it to his eye; but he could not get the object in the field of the glass again, nor yet when he lowered it catch a glimpse of that which he sought with his naked eye.

Turning away to look down the deep depression, he began to watch the birds again, when he was impressed by the cry of one which seemed to have settled, after passing overhead, somewhere on the open beyond the ridge in which lay the niche containing the old lanthorn.

“Ahoy-oy-oy!” he cried, softly, trying to imitate, but with very poor success, the gull’s querulous cry.

“Tah! tah! That’s a jackdaw,” said Aleck, half aloud. “Plain enough; but that mournful wail! It must be a different kind of gull. Black-backed perhaps, with a bad cold through getting wet. I wonder whether a gull could be taught to talk! I don’t see why not. Let’s see, parrots can be taught, of course, and cockatoos learn to say a few words. So do jackdaws and starlings, but very few. Oh, yes! then there’s the raven. Uncle said he knew of one at an old country inn that used to say ‘Coming, sir,’ whenever anyone called for the ostler. Then there are those Indian birds they call Mynahs. Uncle says that some of them talk beautifully. Hallo! There he goes again! It’s just like ‘Ahoy–oy–oy–oy!’ Plain enough to deceive anyone if it came off the sea. I’ll wait till I catch sight of the gull that makes that noise, and next nesting-time I’ll watch for some of the same kind and get two or three of the young ones to bring up. If they can say what sounds something like ‘Ahoy!’ so plainly it ought to be possible to teach one to say more.”

Aleck sat and mused again, running over in his mind such gulls as he knew, and coming to the conclusion that unless it was some unusual specimen, of great vocal powers, it could not be the black-backed nor the lesser black-backed, nor the black-headed herring gull or kittiwake.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but, whatever it may be, it’s a good one to talk,” and as he listened he heard the peculiar, weird, wailing cry again, sounding something like “Ahoy!”

“Gone now,” said Aleck, half aloud, as he keenly watched in the direction of the cry, which had now ceased. “It might as well have flown over this way instead of down over the cliff. Hooray! There it goes!”

He shaded his eyes to follow the steady regular course of a large bronze black bird flying close down the trough-like depression, as close to the bottom as it could keep clear of the rocks, till it reached the end, where it dipped down towards the sea and disappeared.

“Well, I’m a clever one,” cried the lad, with a scornful laugh; “lived ever since I can remember close to the sea, and been told the name of every bird that comes here in the winter and in the summer to nest, and didn’t know the cry of an old shag. Well, say that cry, for it was very different from the regular croak I know. He had been fishing, having a regular gorge, and ended by swallowing a weevil. The little wretch set up its spines, I suppose, as it was going down and stuck, making the old shag come up there to sit and cough to get rid of it. If ever I’m along with anyone who hears that noise and wants to know what it is I can tell him it’s a shag or a cormorant suffering from sore throat.”

Aleck began to use the glass again, for the cutter’s boat came into sight for a few minutes, before gliding along close in once more, to be hidden by the perpendicular cliffs.

“Gone,” he said to himself. “Well, they will not find the poor fellow, for I don’t believe they can search any better than we did. It’s very dreadful. Nice, good-looking chap; as clever as clever. Cocky and stuck-up; but what of that? Fellow gets into a uniform and has a cocked hat and a sword, it makes him feel that he is someone of consequence. How horrible, though! Comes along with the boat ashore over that press-gang kidnapping business, and the boat goes back without him. I wonder whether he was better off than I am, with a father and mother! They’ll have to know soon, and then I wonder what they’ll say!”

Aleck gave another look round, sweeping the sea, and carrying his gaze round to the land, and then starting.

“There it is again!” he said, eagerly, as his eyes rested upon the distant black and white object inland. “Come, I can get a shot at you this time,” he muttered, as, carefully keeping his eyes fixed upon the squat-looking object amongst the rocks, he slowly raised the glass. “I believe it must be a black and white rabbit. There are brown and white ones sometimes, for I’ve seen them, so I don’t see why there shouldn’t be black and white. Got you at last, my fine fellow. Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed. “How absurd! Why, it’s Eben Megg’s wife; just her face with the patch of black hair showing above that bit of rock she’s hiding behind. Why, she must be watching me. I know; poor thing, she’s watching for me to go away so that she can come and look out to sea again for poor Eben.”

Aleck closed his glass and rose to make his way back along the cliff and leave the place clear, a feeling of gentlemanly delicacy urging him to go right off and not intrude his presence upon one who must be suffering terribly from anxiety and pain.

“It seems so dreadful,” he mused, as he went right on without once turning his head in the woman’s direction; “but somehow it only seems fair that both sides should suffer. She’s all in misery because her husband has been dragged away. Yes, he said he’d come back to her, but it’s a great chance if she ever sees him again, and it’s as great a chance whether that poor young middy’s friends ever see him again. I don’t like it, and it’s a great pity there’s so much trouble in the world. Look at poor uncle! Why, I don’t know what real trouble is. I might have gone off to sea all in a huff after what uncle said, and then might have come back as badly off as poor old Double Dot. Well, I’m very, very sorry for poor Eben’s wife, and—there I go again with my poor Eben. Why should I talk like that about a man who has the character of being a wrecker as well as a smuggler? He was never friendly to me and I quite hate him. But whether the King wants men or whether he doesn’t, I just hate Eben so much that if he wanted to escape back to his wife and asked me to help him I’d do it; and just the same, if the smugglers had caught that young middy and were going to ill-use him—kill him perhaps—why, I’d help him too. It’s very stupid to be like that perhaps, sort of Jack o’ both sides, but I suppose it’s how I was made, and it isn’t my fault. Why, I say, it must be near dinner-time. How hungry I do feel!”

The coast was clear for Eben Megg’s wife, and as soon as the lad was out of sight she once more made her way towards the cliff.

Chapter Twenty One.

Aleck went along the cliff the next day to look out for the boat, fully intending to turn back if he caught sight of Eben’s wife; but as far as he could make out she was nowhere in that direction. Still he concluded that she might possibly come to the place she affected, so he determined to keep on his own side of the depression, lowering himself down to the shelf in which was the niche or crack, in the belief that he could get a fair view over the sea from among the scattered masses of rock while being quite out of the woman’s sight if she should come after all.

He swung himself down till he stood upon the shelf, and gave one hasty look round, to come to the conclusion directly after that if the poor woman sought his favourite look-out spot he could not have chosen a worse place, for he would be in full view, no matter where he crouched.

“I know,” he said to himself; “I can get over here and lie down in the crack on the other side.”

He began to climb, after making for the hole where the lanthorn and tinder-box still lay tucked tightly in beyond the reach of the wind; and the next minute, after making his way diagonally upward, he came upon the beginning of a steep narrow gully, going right down more and more deeply, so that forty or fifty yards away he could not see the bottom, the place having the appearance of being a vast crack formed by a sudden subsidence of the rocky cliff.

He was now out of sight from the other side of the great depression, and was just congratulating himself upon his selection of a hiding-place and look-out combined, when he recalled the sounds he had heard during a former visit.

“Why, it must have been caused by something falling down here,” he argued, and he looked outward, to see that this was one of the narrowest, deepest and most savage-looking gullies he had seen, the place being giddy to look down and impressing him with the belief that the greatest care was necessary for anyone to move about; and as he dropped down upon his knees it was with a feeling of relief and safety, for accustomed though he was to climbing about upon the cliffs, this one particular spot looked giddy and wild.

To his great satisfaction he found that he could follow the crack right down to the sea and obtain a good view without being seen, unless anyone had followed his example and climbed; but what most took his attention was that though he had been climbing about the place often in search of the eggs of rare birds, he had never been there before, or noted the existence of such a deeply-split cavity in the cliffs.

“I must have been able to see it from off the sea,” he argued, but gave himself up to the thought directly after that ridges and hollows had a completely different aspect when seen from below.

“I should know it now directly if I were sailing by and looked up, of course. I fancy I can recollect this steep wall-like bit down below where I’m sitting.”

He started the next moment, for a great gull had come gliding up from behind and passed so closely over his head that he was startled by the faint whizz of its outspread wings, while the bird itself was so startled that it uttered a hoarse cry of alarm and plunged down head foremost like a stone.

“Why, that must have been the kind that made that cry like a hail,” cried Aleck, as the bird disappeared into the depths of the gully, while he had hardly realised the thought before there rose from below a faint, hoarse cry.

“I thought so,” he said; “those birds have different cries and they sound strange, according to where you are.”

He did not finish his words, for all at once the peculiar cry arose again, and this time it seemed to come from out of the deep jagged hollow, and certainly from the other side.

“How strange!” said the lad, with a feeling akin to dread running through him. “That can’t be a bird.”

He listened again, waiting for some minutes in the midst of the silence of the great wilderness in which he crouched.

Then “Ahoy!” came up, so clearly that there was no room for doubt, and Aleck’s heart began to beat fast as thought after thought flashed through his brain.

“It must be someone calling,” he felt and when after a few minutes the cry arose again, the thought struck him that it must come from somewhere beneath his feet, from an opening in the wall of the crack and then strike against the opposite wall, from which it was reflected, so that it seemed to come from that side, and from some distance away.

Aleck waited till the cry came across again, and then shouted in answer:

“Hallo there! What is it?”

There was no response. Then after a pause came “Ahoy!” once more.

“Where are you?” shouted Aleck, but there was no reply, and the result was the same when he tried over and over again.

“Whoever it is, he can’t hear me,” thought the lad, and growing excited now as he concluded that some fisherman, or perhaps a strange wanderer, had slipped, fallen, and perhaps broken a limb, he began to set about finding him and affording help.

Coming to the belief more fully that the sound came from beneath him, Aleck lay down upon his chest with his head over the brink of the rocky gash, and, holding on tightly, strained out as far as he could to look down. But he could see nothing, and rose up again to look to his left for the dying out in the solid cliff of the top end of the gorge.

That meaning a difficult climb, he made up his mind, to lower himself down over the edge, and setting his teeth, he began to lower himself over; but a slip at the outset so upset his nerves that he scrambled back, panting as if he had been running a mile.

“Nearly went down,” he muttered. “That’s not the way to help anyone who has just fallen.”

He paused for a few moments to think about getting help from Eilygugg.

“There are no smugglers at home now,” he said to himself, and his thoughts turned homeward.

“Uncle couldn’t climb up here and handle ropes,” he muttered; “and as for Ness—bah! he’s a stupid muddling old woman.

“I must get right round somehow and see where the opening is,” said the lad, at last. “But when I have found it, what then? I must get back here again; and then? Yes, I must have help and a rope. Oh, what a lonely old place this is when you want anything done! Bah! What a grumbler you are,” he cried, the next moment. “You forgot all about Tom. He’s sure to be over to-day, and I’ll bring him with a rope.”

This thought heartened the lad up, and he set off cautiously and quickly to get round by the head of the great rocky gash to the other side.

The journey was very dangerous and bad, but he was a good climber, and at the end of a dozen yards he was stopped by a great block which lay across his path with the portion to his right overhanging the gulf, forcing him to go round by the other end.

This he passed with ease, and he uttered a cry of astonishment the next moment, for he found himself at the narrow head of a transverse gash which stopped further progress in the way he intended, but offered apparently, as it curved round and down, an easy descent to the very part he wished to reach. And so it proved, for proceeding cautiously, he began to descend by a narrow ledge or shelf, with the overhanging wall on his right and a sheer fall of twenty feet on his left.

A few yards further it was forty feet, and again a few yards placed him in a position that cut off all view of the bottom.

“Won’t do to be giddy here,” he said to himself. “Who’d have thought of finding such a place?”

He moved along cautiously, holding on by the rock on his right, and found that it was singularly cracked and riven, but it afforded good hold. Directly after a short pause and peer forward and downward to try if he could see any signs of the poor fellow who had called for help, he stepped on again slowly and cautiously, anchoring himself, as it were, by thrusting his arm to the elbow in a perpendicular crack, so that he could hang outward and get a better view down.

“Hullo!” he ejaculated, in wonder. “How strange!” and he began to sniff, as a cool dank puff of air saluted his nostrils and he recognised the peculiar odour of decaying seaweed.

“This narrow crack must go right down to the sea somewhere,” he said to himself. “Well, why not? Rocks do split all sorts of ways. There, I’m right,” he added, for there was another moist puff of cool air, and in company with it a peculiar far-off whispering sound, one which he well knew, for he had heard it thousands of times, it being the soft rattling of pebbles running back over one another after being cast up by a wave.

“This is queer,” he muttered, and, withdrawing his arm, he took another step or two along the ledge, which curved more round to his right, so that he could not see above a couple of yards, while upon getting to the end of these he found that he had to pass an angle in the rock face which brought him to where the ledge widened out considerably.

“I must be just under where I lay down to look over,” he said to himself, and having plenty of room now he turned to look upward, and then stopped short as if turned to stone, for from somewhere just beyond where he stood came the soft hollow rush and hiss of shingle following a retiring wave, and with it a distant hollow-sounding “Ahoy!”

But Aleck did not start forward to peer down some deep chasm leading through the huge cliffs to the sea, but, as has been said, stood fast, looking upward, as if turned to stone, his attention having been seized upon by the rattling, rustling sound made by something above his head, and the next moment a pair of feet came into sight so close to him that he could have touched them where they hung on a level with his eyes.

They stopped short, with the toes resting for a few moments upon a projecting stone, and then a man dropped lightly upon the broad ledge with a panting ejaculation of relief.

Chapter Twenty Two.

There was another ejaculation uttered upon that rough ledge of rock, and it was uttered by Aleck, in the form of the one word:

“Eben!”

The man gave forth a hoarse cry, sprang upon him, and pinned him by the shoulders against the rock, panting breathlessly the while as if exhausted by previous exertions, while his lips were drawn back from his white teeth and he wore generally the aspect of some savage bunted beast at bay.

“Don’t!” cried Aleck, angrily, dragging at the man’s wrists as he noted his fierce looks; “you hurt. Let go. Why, I thought the press-gang had taken you right away?”

“Did yer?” growled the man, breathlessly, through his set teeth, while his dark eyes seemed to glitter. “Then you see they haven’t. What are you doing here?”

“Having the skin rubbed off the back of my head, I think,” cried Aleck, struggling to get free. “Be quiet! Are you mad?”

“’Most,” panted the man, tightening his grasp.

“But you’ll have me off the ledge here if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, and then you’ll tell no tales,” growled the man, in a hoarse whisper, for he was recovering his breath.

“What about?” said Aleck, uneasily, for the man’s manner was terrible in its intensity.

“What about?” snarled Eben.

“Yes; I don’t understand you. I say, Eben, have you escaped?”

The man glared at him, and the look which met his—a look full of enquiry and perfectly fearless—seemed to disarm him somewhat.

“No,” he said, “I won’t think it was your doing, my lad.”

“What?” asked Aleck.

“Putting the gang on to us the other night.”

“Mine? No; I was fast asleep in bed when the shots woke me, and I went up the cliff to see.”

“Ah! I s’pose so,” said the smuggler, in a hoarse whisper. “I’ve escaped for a bit, but they’re after me. I s’pose they felt I should come back to the missus. I say,” he continued, eagerly, “is she all right, Master Aleck?”

“Yes. I’ve seen her two or three times right up the cliff.”

“What for?” said the smuggler, sharply, and his eyes glittered fiercely again.

“To look and see if you were coming, of course.”

“Yes, of course,” said the man, in a peculiar manner, and a curious smile dawned upon his lip.

“But how did you manage to escape?”

“Jumped overboard and swam for it.”

“From the cutter’s boat?”

“No, from the sloop’s port-hole, my lad. But what about the cutter’s boat?” he added, with a sharply questioning look.

“She came across to the cove this morning, and I saw her not long ago.”

“Looking for me?”

“No; for the young middy who is missing. Tell me, Eben, did you know anything about him?”

“Me? Hush, don’t talk! The cutter’s men have been hunting me this last half-hour, and they’re out yonder among the gullies now. They see me, I think. So you’ve found it then?” he said, with a savagely malicious grin.

“Yes; I never knew there was a way down here.”

“Been often, I s’pose?”

“Been often? Why, I’d just got here when I heard you coming.”

“Ahoy!” came faintly from somewhere in front. “There it is again, Eben,” cried Aleck, forgetting everything else now in the excitement of his discovery. “You heard it?”

“Yes, I heard it,” said the man, grimly.

“I heard it yesterday too,” continued Aleck. “Some poor fellow has fallen down the cliff somewhere about here, and I was trying to get down to him.”

The man looked at him curiously and as if he was trying to read him through and through.

“What for?” he said, hoarsely.

“What for? Don’t I tell you I’ve heard him before, crying for help? He must have broken an arm or a leg, or he would have climbed back.”

“If he could,” said the smuggler, grimly. “Here, hold hard a minute. Don’t you stir, on yer life.”

“Oh, I’m not going to run any risks!” said Aleck, coolly. “I know it’s dangerous.”

“Very,” said the hunted man, in a peculiar tone and with a peculiar look. “You stand fast, my lad.”

He had for some time released his hold of the lad, and turned to re-mount the rock.

“What are you going to do?” said Aleck.

“Hush! Don’t shout like that, youngster. Don’t I tell you the cutter’s men saw me and are after me?”

“Oh, yes; of course,” said Aleck, coolly; “but, look here; you hide a bit, and I’ll call them.”

“What!” gasped the smuggler, in his astonishment. “What for? To take me?”

“No, no! They could help to find the poor fellow lying somewhere below there.”

“No, they couldn’t,” said the man, fiercely. “You be quiet there, I say.”

“Well, of course you don’t want to be taken, and I don’t want them to take you, Eben.”

“Say that again, lad,” cried the man, excitedly.

“What for? I say I don’t want the press-gang to drag you away, even if you are a smuggler.”

“Why?” cried the man, excitedly.

“Because it seems so hard on your poor wife.”

“Hah–ah–ah!” ejaculated the man, softly, as he turned away his face and spoke more gently. “You keep quiet here, Master Aleck, while I go and see what the cutter’s men are about. I won’t be long, and when they’ve gone I’ll help you to find the poor fellow for saying that.”

“For saying what?”

“Your words about my poor lass. Master Aleck, I’m a bad ’un, but she don’t think so, and if I don’t get back to her it’ll be the death of the poor gal. Now, after my saying that soft stuff will you go and split upon me?”

“Betray you? No, you know I won’t.”

“Yes, I know you won’t, my lad. You allus was a gentleman, Master Aleck. There, I’m off. I shan’t be long, and when I come back I’ll help you to find the poor chap as is hurt.”

“Thank you, Eben; but mind the men don’t take you.”

“I’ll mind, my lad; but if there’s an accident and I don’t come back you wait till the cutter’s men have rowed me away, and then you go and tell the missus. Say she’s to help you find the poor chap as is hurt and get him away.”

“But she couldn’t climb about here, Eben.”

“Better than you can, my lad.”

“Very well, then. Thank you,” said Aleck, feeling a bit puzzled at the man’s words. “In the meantime I’ll go on looking for him. He must be somewhere close by.”

“No, he isn’t,” said the man, grimly.

“How do you know?”

“’Cause I do,” was the reply, and then, actively as a goat, the smuggler sprang up the rocks and was gone.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Eben Megg had only just disappeared when the faint, monotonous cry of “Ahoy!” rose once more from below, setting the thoughts buzzing and throbbing about in Aleck’s brain in a most extraordinary way. For the lad felt utterly puzzled—he knew not why. He felt that there was something he ought to know, and yet he did not know it, and he failed to grasp the reason why he could not understand it. There was some mystery that he ought to clear up, he felt; but, all the same, simple as it was, he could not find it out.

Like the children playing at a nursery game, he was so close that he was burning, and at one moment he was on the point of being as wise as the smuggler, but just then a loud piercing whistle rang out, followed by answering shouts, and he did grasp at once from whence they came, and waited anxiously, fully expecting to hear more shouts, some of a triumphant character, telling that the fugitive was in view or perhaps caught.

“I oughtn’t to mind, of course,” he muttered, as he strained his ears to catch the next sound; “but somehow I do, and, as I said, for that poor woman’s sake. Ah! They’ve caught him now. No; it was only an order shouted. Why, they’re coming right up here—I can hear them plainly!”

The lad listened excitedly, for though he could see nothing of the sailors he could follow them by the sounds they made and tell that they had spread out over a good deal of ground in their hunt for the escaped man.

Nearer and nearer they came till Aleck felt that they must have reached the ledge from which he had watched the rippling sea, while directly after they were so near to the hiding-place that he could catch a good deal of what was said, the voices ascending and then seeming to curl over and drop down the steep rockside where he stood.

“They haven’t caught him yet,” thought Aleck, after some few minutes’ beating of the cliff-top and slopes had taken place. “Perhaps they won’t catch him, after all, for he must be as cunning as a fox about hiding-places. Why, they must be coming here!” he thought, excitedly, as the voices began to come nearer and nearer. “They’ll find me, for certain, and then—

“Well, what then?” he thought, as he came to a sudden stop. “Suppose they do catch me and ask me why I’m here! Why, I can tell them I came to try and find someone whom I heard calling for help; and I can’t help what Eben says, I must let the sailors help me then.”

He listened, and felt certain that the sailors and their leader came along as far as the great piece of rock he had been obliged to circumvent, and once round that the men were bound to find him.

“Ahoy!” came faintly again.

“Ahoy yourself!” said a voice. “Who’s that so far off? Some fellow has wandered right away and lost himself. Idiot! Why didn’t he keep within touch of his messmates? Ahoy, there! Ahoy! Ahoy!”

The cry was answered, and in a few minutes Aleck was able to detect the fact from the dying-away of the voices that the search party were growing more distant, so that the next mournful “Ahoy!” fell upon his ears alone, sounding so despairing that the desire to go in search of the appealer for help was stronger than he could restrain.

Glancing back and upward then at the spot where Eben had disappeared, he went cautiously forward for a few yards, to find to his astonishment that from being fairly broad the rugged shelf along which he was proceeding rapidly narrowed till progress grew risky, while at the end of another dozen feet or so it ceased, and he came to a dead stand, looking in vain for a way forward and a sight of some crack or passage along which he could descend towards the sea.

Then he listened for a repetition of the call for help as a guide to his next proceedings; but all was still save the querulous cry of a gull.

“I can’t understand it a bit,” he said, looking about him in a more perplexed way than ever. “Eben Megg spoke as if he knew about someone being in trouble; yes, and that if he did not return I was to go to his wife. Why, what nonsense it seems! How could he who has been away for days know anything about—about—oh! Was there ever such a dense, wooden-headed idiot as I am!” he raged out. “Why, of course! I can see now as clear as clear. It’s that young middy—what’s his name?—calling for help. They must have trapped him during the struggle, and there is a regular smugglers’ cave somewhere, after all. The poor fellow must be shut up in it; and that explains why Eben looked so furiously at me when he found me here. He thought I had discovered the secret hiding-place that he was making for. Oh, my word, how plain and easy it all is when you know how! Yes, that’s it,” he said aloud, excitedly, “and the cutter’s people are gone, so I’m not going to hold myself bound by anything I have said to Eben. That poor fellow must have been left to starve in some dark hole, and—no, he hasn’t. ‘Go to my wife,’ he said. Of course! Because she knew where the prisoner was hid, and—to be sure, she wasn’t going to watch for Eben, as I thought, but to take the prisoner something to eat and drink. Talk about wiping the dust out of one’s eyes! I’ve got mine clear now, and that poor fellow has to be found, while, what is more, he must be somewhere down below where I stand.”

Aleck’s brow ran into lines and puckers as he stood looking about him for a few minutes before hurrying back to the perpendicular crevice he had discovered, and upon reaching it there was the hissing rush of the pebbles and a suggestion of a slapping sound as if water had struck against the rock, but evidently far, far down, while the damp seaweedy odour came cooler and fresher than ever to his nostrils.

“I could get down here,” he muttered, “if I were no bigger than a rabbit; but of course this isn’t the way. There must be just such a place as this, only many times as big, and I’ve got to find it.”

“Ahoy!” came faintly the next minute, but not up the cavity, and the lad stood puzzled and wondering for a few moments longer, before placing his face as far in as he could, and, breathing in the soft, salt, moist air, he shouted back down the hole, “Ahoy!” as loudly as he could.

Then he stood listening, for “Ahoy!” came from quite a different direction, and then there was a reply from somewhere else, closely followed by a shrill whistle.

“That’s not from the prisoner,” said Aleck, growing more excited. “The sailors are coming back. Are they coming here, after all? Well, I’m sorry for Eben, but that poor fellow must be rescued, and I shall have to—”

Aleck did not say what, but hurried along the shelf again, startled by the sound of falling stones, and the next minute he caught sight of the smuggler’s descending feet, and then the fierce-looking fellow dropped lightly before him and caught him by the arm.

“They saw me,” he panted, breathlessly, “and have been hot on my track—I couldn’t dodge them anyhow—quite surrounded. Look here, Master Aleck—you know what it means if they get me—flogging now for escaping! You don’t want me to be took?”

“No, Eben; but—”

“Don’t talk, my lad. I’m hard set. You’re a gentleman, and won’t betray a poor fellow?”

“No, but I won’t help to keep that poor young officer a prisoner.”

“Ah, you’ve found out then—you know where he is?”

“Then it is true that you’ve got him shut up somewhere?”

“Somewhere?” cried the man, sharply, in a hoarse whisper. “Then you haven’t found the place?”

“No,” said Aleck, frankly, “only guessed that he is somewhere hidden, and keeps calling out.”

“Look here, Master Aleck, it is true, and if I swear that as soon as all is safe I’ll help you to set him free and put him where he can get back to his ship, will you swear, too, that you’ll never tell where our stores are?”

“I’m not going to swear anything, Eben.”

The man made a fierce gesture, and the lad felt that he was at the fellow’s mercy, where a sharp thrust of the hand would send him headlong down, most likely to his death. But he did not shrink.

“I promise you I won’t betray you, Eben,” he said, “if you give me your word to set the poor young fellow free.”

“Come on, then—if there’s time,” said the smuggler, hoarsely. “I can hear ’em coming on fast. Now, then, I’m going to show you what all us chaps have sworn on our lives never to let out. Quick! I know you’ve got plenty of game in you, my lad. I’m going to jump down there.”

He pointed down over the edge of the shelf as he spoke.

“Are you mad?” said Aleck, hoarsely, feeling that the man must be to propose what seemed to be like a leap into the next world.

“Not me, my lad. Look! I trust you to come after me sharp—before the cutter’s men see you. Come, you won’t shrink now?”

“He came along this way, I’ll swear,” came from overhead, quite loudly, and a whistle rang out again.

Eben Megg seized Aleck’s arm with his left hand, and with his right caught the lad’s fingers for a moment in a firm grip.

“Jump just as I do. I’ll be ready to catch you.”

Aleck nodded, and then felt ready to shut his eyes, for the man gave one glance upward where a loud murmur of voices could be heard, and then stepped close to the edge of the shelf, placed his feet close together, drew himself up stiffly, and then made a little jump, just sufficient to let himself drop, as it were, clear of the rock, his back being visible just for a moment, and then there was a slight pat coming from below.

Aleck stood with his heart seeming to rise to his throat as if to choke him, while he listened intently for the sound of a falling body loosening a little avalanche of stones.

But all was still below, while above there was the trampling of feet, and a voice said, loudly:

“Are you sure he came this way?”

“Quite, sir. He must have dodged round by that great block of stone.”

“Forward then,” cried the first voice, while from below where he stood came a low, hoarse whisper:

“Now, then, jump!”

For a moment Aleck felt that it was too much. Coward or no coward, he dared not make such a leap in the dark as that. Then, setting his teeth, he stepped close to the edge of the shelf, placed his feet exactly as he had seen the smuggler prepare to drop, and then, with his elbows pressed close to his sides and his open hands raised to a level with his chest, he took the little leap, with the opposite side of the rift seeming to rush upward past his staring eyes, while he dropped what seemed, from the time it lasted, to his overstrained nerves and imagination a tremendous depth—in reality about seven feet—before his feet came flat upon the rock and a strong arm caught him across the chest like a living protecting bar.

Aleck’s eyes turned dim, and the rock face in front spun round before him as he felt himself pressed backward—a few feet beneath what seemed to be a rugged stone eave, which protected him and his companion from being seen by anyone who should peer over the edge, while the next moment the smuggler’s lips were close to his ear and the breath came hot as the man whispered:

“I never knowed a lad before who dared to jump like that. Come on, Master Aleck; I’d trust you with anything now.”

Chapter Twenty Four.

Aleck resigned himself to the smuggler’s guiding hand, which gripped his arm tightly, and as the giddy sensation began to pass off and he saw more clearly, he grasped the position in which he stood—to wit, that he was upon another ledge of rock, apparently another stratum of the great slowly-built-up masses which formed the mighty cliffs, one, however, which had been eaten away more by the action of time, so that it was much more deeply indented, while the upper stratum from which he had dropped overlapped considerably, save in one place, where this lower shelf projected in a rocky tongue, which resembled a huge bracket, and a cold shiver ran through the lad as he saw now fully the perilous nature of his leap.

“Haven’t found out the way yet,” said Eben, coolly; “but when they do they won’t find out which way we’ve come. What do you say, sir?”

“Oh, no!” said Aleck, trying to conceal a shiver. “But what a horrible leap!”

“Nothing when you’re used to it, sir. All right if you keep your head, and safe from being found out.”

“But suppose anyone were on the opposite side?”

“No good to suppose that, master. Nothing ever comes there but the gulls and mews, with a few sea parrots. Nobody could get there without being let down by a line, and the birds never nest there, so it’s quite safe. Now, then, if you’re ready we’ll go down.”