Sappers and Miners Part 7

"Can you make out what it was, then?"

"Yes; it was something we don't understand, making joy because some one as it don't like has been drownded."

The boy felt too much startled and excited to pause and ridicule his companion's superst.i.tious notions, and he took a few steps quickly to the rough, square wall, from a faint hope that the sound might have come from there; but as he touched the wall, a strong grip was on his shoulder.

"No, yer don't," growled Hardock. "You keep back."

"But that cry!" panted Joe.

"It didn't come from there. It was sea way."

"Yes; there it is again!"

Sounding more faint and distant, the strange cry floated from away to their left, and a strange thrill ran through Joe Jollivet, as he yielded to the man's hand, and suffered himself to be drawn right away from the mouth of the hole.

"Yes, I heard it," said Hardock, in a low tremulous voice, and with a look of awe, which accorded ill with the man's muscular figure. "Don't you know what it was?"

"No; do you? Could it be Gwyn calling for help?" The man nodded his head and spoke in a low mysterious whisper, as if afraid of being overheard.

"I dunno about calling for help, my lad; but it was him."

"But where--where?" cried Joe, wildly.

"Out yonder. We couldn't see 'em, but they must ha' come sweeping out of the pit there, and gone right off with him, like a flock of birds, right away out to sea."

"Oh, you fool!" cried Joe. "It's horrible to listen to you great big fishermen and miners with your old women's tales. If it's Gwyn calling, he must be somewhere near, I know. There's another shaft somewhere, and he's calling up that. Come and see."

"There aren't no other shaft, my lad," said the man, mysteriously.

"It's what I say. You'll know better some day, and begin to believe when you've seen and heard as much as me. There's things and critters about these cliffs sometimes of a night, and in a storm, as makes your hair stand on end to hear 'em calling to one another. Why, I've knowed the times when--"

"There it is again," cried Joe, excitedly. "Ahoy!" he yelled. "Where are you?"

There was no answer, and the boy stood staring about him with every sense strained, listening intently; but no further sound was heard, and the man laid his hand upon the boy's arm.

"Come away, lad," he whispered, "afore ill comes to us. Didn't you hear?"

"I heard the cry."

"Nay, I meant that there whispering noise as seemed to come up out o'

the pit. Let's go while we're safe."

"Nonsense! What is there to be afraid of?" cried Joe, impatiently.

"Listen!"

"I don't know what there is to be afraid of, my lad; but there's something unked about, and the gashly thing's given me the creeps. Come away."

"Ah, there! Why, it's towards the cliffs. A cry!" Joe shouted, for, very softly, but perfectly distinct, there was a peculiar distant wailing cry. "It's all right, Sam. He's alive somewhere, and he's calling to us for help."

CHAPTER FIVE.

FISHING FOR A BOY.

Sam Hardock looked at the boy with a mingling of horror and pity on his countenance.

"What yer talking about?" he cried. "Can't yer understand as it means trouble? Someone's deloodering of yer away so as you may be drownded, too."

But Joe Jollivet hardly heard him in his excitement. He was convinced that he had heard Gwyn calling for aid, and he dashed off in search of his comrade.

He felt that it was useless, but he stepped back to the mouth of the ancient mine, and shouted down it once, but without response, and then started to climb out of the gully in which he stood, mounting laboriously over the rugged granite ma.s.ses which lay about, tangling and scratching himself among the brambles, and at last standing high up on the slope to gaze round and shout.

"What's the good o' that?" cried Hardock, who was following him. "Come back."

For answer Joe gazed round about him, wondering whether by any possibility there was another opening into the mine hidden by bramble and heath. He had been all over the place with Gwyn scores of times, and the walled-in mouth was familiar enough; and from the cliff edge to the mighty blocks piled up here and there he and Gwyn had climbed and crawled, hunting adders and lizards among the heath, chased rabbits to their holes in the few sandy patches, and foraged for sea-birds' eggs on the granite ledges and, by the help of a rope, over on the face of the cliffs. But never once had they come upon any opening save the one down into the old mine.

"But there must be--there must be," muttered Joe, with a feeling of relief, "and I've got to find it. It's blocked up with stones, and the blackberries have grown all over it. There!--All right. Ahoy!

Coming."

For the faint halloa came now very distinctly.

"Are you comin' back?" shouted Hardock. "Don't stand hollering there in that mad way."

"He's here--he's here--somewhere," shouted back Joe, excitedly, and he waved to his companion to come on.

"Yah! stuff!" growled Hardock; but he followed up the side of the gully, while Joe went on away from the sea to where a wall of rock rose up some twenty feet and ran onward for seventy or eighty.

Joe came back hurriedly after a few moments and met Hardock.

"Well, where is he?" said the latter.

"I don't know," panted the boy; "somewhere underneath. I keep hearing him."

"You keep hearing o' them," said the man, with a look full of the superst.i.tion to which he was a victim.

"Ahoy!" came faintly from behind them.

"Now, then," cried Joe, excitedly; "he's up there."

He turned and ran up toward the wall of rock once more, followed more deliberately by Hardock, who hung the coil of rope on his shoulder.

"Well, where is he?" said the man, as he reached the spot where Joe was hunting about among the great pieces of stone.

"I don't know, but there must be another opening here." Hardock shook his head mysteriously.

"But you heard him shout."

"I heerd a voice," said the man; and as he spoke there came a querulous chorus from the gulls that were floating in the air close to the edge of the cliff.