The Lost Middy Part 40

"'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 n.o.body 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s which had given him the glimpse in pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s once more, and raised it to his eye; but he could not get the object in the field of the gla.s.s again, nor yet when he lowered it catch a glimpse of that which he sought with his naked eye.