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.