CHAPTER TWENTY.
The party from the sloop-of-war came twice, led by the lieutenant, andhad long and patient searches with Aleck in their boat ready to followor lead the men into one or other of the openings in the rocks where thewaves ran in with a peculiarly hollow echoing rush at low water, butwhich were covered deeply at half tide. These chasms were examineddiligently, for the lieutenant had noted that the tide was very low whenthe attack was made. But nothing was discovered.
Aleck noted that the young officer looked very despondent on the secondoccasion, 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 onthe cliff, where with Tom's help he had set up a spar ready forsignalling, 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 wouldbe welcome, but encountered a short, sharp rebuff in the shape of anenquiry as to who he was, and, upon explaining, he was told sharply togo about his business.
"Look here, sir," said the officer, "I don't want any natives to lead meon a false scent."
"Very well," said Aleck, quietly, and he climbed up the cliff again, andafter noting which way the boat's head was turned he went off beyond thesmugglers' cove and reached the great gap, where he descended to theshelf where he had found the lanthorn and tinder-box.
He had just reached it, when a figure started up and began to hurryinland, just giving him a glimpse of her face before she disappearedamong the rocks, and he recognised Eben Megg's wife.
"Been looking out to sea, poor thing!" thought Aleck. "I'm afraidshe'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 hefelt that all the openings below where he stood had been thoroughlysearched.
Aleck hung about till the afternoon, and saw the boat shoot off frombeyond 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 theglass at the sloop, she was not there; but the cutter, which had beenabsent, lay in about the same place, and after a time the lad made outanother boat coming towards the smugglers' cove.
"A fresh party," he said to himself. "Well, I should like to help themfind 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 headof the smugglers' cove, making once more for the high ground beyond, forit commanded the coast in two directions. But long before he reachedhis favourite spot he again caught sight of the fluttering bluepetticoat 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 theniche in the rock face, settled himself down with his glass, and watchedthe cutter's boat, which was steadily pulling in. The birds meanwhilekept on flitting down from where they sat in rows along the inaccessibleshelves, skimmed over the water, dived, and came up again with smallfishes in their beaks, to return to feed the young, which often enoughhad been carried off by some great gull, one of the many which glidedhere and there, uttering their peculiarly querulous, mournful cries, sodifferent in tone from the sharp, hearty calls of the larger inlandbirds.
There were a good many sailing about overhead, Aleck noted, and theywere more noisy than usual, and this, judging from old lore which he hadpicked up from Tom Bodger and the fishermen, he attributed to a comingchange in the weather, wind perhaps, when the sea, instead of being softblue and calm, might be lashed by a storm to send the waves thunderingin upon the rocks, to break up into cataracts of broken water and sendthe glittering foam whirling aloft in clouds.
"No more hunts then," thought Aleck; and then aloud to a greatwhite-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 downdirectly after beyond the cliff, its cry sounding distant and faint.
The boat came on nearer and nearer till it, too, disappeared, beinghidden by the great bluff to his left.
Then half a dozen more gulls rose up and came skimming along the ruggedtrough-like depression towards where he sat, with bird-covered ledges toleft and right. When they caught sight of him they rose higher with agraceful curve, and began wheeling round, uttering their discordantcries, some of the more daring coming nearer and nearer upon theirwidespread spotless wings, white almost as snow, till a sway would sendone wing down, the other up, giving the looker-on a glimpse of the softbluish grey of their backs, save in the cases of the larger birds--thegreat thieves and pirates among the young--which were often black.
There was no boat to watch now, so Aleck, after sweeping the horizon insearch of the sloop-of-war, gradually turned the end of his glass inlandover the sweep of down and wild moor, till, just as he was in the act oflowering it, he caught sight, some distance off and directly inland, ofsome object which looked like a short, pudgy, black and white birdsitting upon a rock.
"What's that?" he said, steadying the glass which had given him theglimpse in passing over it; but, try he would, he could not catch theobject again.
"Couldn't have been a rabbit," he muttered. "Fancy, perhaps," and helowered the glass, to begin closing it as he trusted to his unaidedvision 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 todry."
He began to focus the glass once more, and raised it to his eye; but hecould not get the object in the field of the glass again, nor yet whenhe lowered it catch a glimpse of that which he sought with his nakedeye.
Turning away to look down the deep depression, he began to watch thebirds again, when he was impressed by the cry of one which seemed tohave settled, after passing overhead, somewhere on the open beyond theridge in which lay the niche containing the old lanthorn.
"Ahoy-oy-oy!" he cried, softly, trying to imitate, but with very poorsuccess, 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 wonderwhether a gull could be taught to talk! I don't see why not. Let'ssee, parrots can be taught, of course, and cockatoos learn to say a fewwords. So do jackdaws and starlings, but very few. Oh, yes! thenthere's the raven. Uncle said he knew of one at an old country inn thatused to say `Coming, sir,' whenever anyone called for the ostler. Thenthere are those Indian birds they call Mynahs. Uncle says that some ofthem 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, andnext nesting-time I'll watch for some of the same kind and get two orthree of the young ones to bring up. If they can say what soundssomething like `Ahoy!' so plainly it ought to be possible to teach oneto say more."
Aleck sat and mused again, running over in his mind such gulls as heknew, and coming to the conclusion that unless it was some unusualspecimen, of great vocal powers, it could not be the black-backed northe 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 agood 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 thedirection of the cry, which had now ceased. "It might as well haveflown over this way instead of down over the cliff. Hooray! There itgoes!"
He shaded his eyes to follow the steady regular course of a large b
ronzeblack bird flying close down the trough-like depression, as close to thebottom 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; "livedever since I can remember close to the sea, and been told the name ofevery bird that comes here in the winter and in the summer to nest, anddidn't know the cry of an old shag. Well, say that cry, for it was verydifferent from the regular croak I know. He had been fishing, having aregular gorge, and ended by swallowing a weevil. The little wretch setup its spines, I suppose, as it was going down and stuck, making the oldshag come up there to sit and cough to get rid of it. If ever I'm alongwith anyone who hears that noise and wants to know what it is I can tellhim it's a shag or a cormorant suffering from sore throat."
Aleck began to use the glass again, for the cutter's boat came intosight for a few minutes, before gliding along close in once more, to behidden 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 verydreadful. Nice, good-looking chap; as clever as clever. Cocky andstuck-up; but what of that? Fellow gets into a uniform and has a cockedhat and a sword, it makes him feel that he is someone of consequence.How horrible, though! Comes along with the boat ashore over thatpress-gang kidnapping business, and the boat goes back without him. Iwonder 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 gazeround to the land, and then starting.
"There it is again!" he said, eagerly, as his eyes rested upon thedistant black and white object inland. "Come, I can get a shot at youthis time," he muttered, as, carefully keeping his eyes fixed upon thesquat-looking object amongst the rocks, he slowly raised the glass. "Ibelieve it must be a black and white rabbit. There are brown and whiteones sometimes, for I've seen them, so I don't see why there shouldn'tbe black and white. Got you at last, my fine fellow. Ha, ha, ha," helaughed. "How absurd! Why, it's Eben Megg's wife; just her face withthe patch of black hair showing above that bit of rock she's hidingbehind. Why, she must be watching me. I know; poor thing, she'swatching for me to go away so that she can come and look out to seaagain for poor Eben."
Aleck closed his glass and rose to make his way back along the cliff andleave the place clear, a feeling of gentlemanly delicacy urging him togo right off and not intrude his presence upon one who must be sufferingterribly from anxiety and pain.
"It seems so dreadful," he mused, as he went right on without onceturning his head in the woman's direction; "but somehow it only seemsfair that both sides should suffer. She's all in misery because herhusband has been dragged away. Yes, he said he'd come back to her, butit's a great chance if she ever sees him again, and it's as great achance whether that poor young middy's friends ever see him again. Idon't like it, and it's a great pity there's so much trouble in theworld. Look at poor uncle! Why, I don't know what real trouble is. Imight have gone off to sea all in a huff after what uncle said, and thenmight have come back as badly off as poor old Double Dot. Well, I'mvery, very sorry for poor Eben's wife, and--there I go again with mypoor Eben. Why should I talk like that about a man who has thecharacter of being a wrecker as well as a smuggler? He was neverfriendly to me and I quite hate him. But whether the King wants men orwhether he doesn't, I just hate Eben so much that if he wanted to escapeback 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-usehim--kill him perhaps--why, I'd help him too. It's very stupid to belike that perhaps, sort of Jack o' both sides, but I suppose it's how Iwas made, and it isn't my fault. Why, I say, it must be neardinner-time. How hungry I do feel!"
The coast was clear for Eben Megg's wife, and as soon as the lad was outof sight she once more made her way towards the cliff.
The Lost Middy: Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap Page 20