“What’s the matter with you?”
“Bit of a tumble, father, that’s all,” said the boy cheerfully, as he placed his hand to the back of his head.
“You should take care, then; rocks are harder than heads. Hi! You Jemmy Dadd!”
“Hullo!” came out of the darkness.
“Get Tom to help you to-morrow. Bring a bushel or two o’ lime stuff, and stop up this hole, all but a bit big enough for a pigeon to go in and out. It’ll give him a taste o’ light and air. Now, youngster, on with you. Show the lanthorn, Jemmy.”
The man came forward, and Archy was made to follow him, the smuggler and his son coming on behind; and ten minutes later the prisoner was seated in his old place in the darkness, with Ram’s basket of provisions for consolation. As he sat there, listening to the departing footsteps, and feeling more and more that it was quite true,—escape must be impossible down the cliff, or else they would not have left him with the opening unguarded,—there was the dull, heavy report of the closing trap-door, and the rattle and snap of bolts, and that followed by the rumbling down of the pieces of stone.
He had pretty well thought out the correct theory of this noise, that it was on purpose to hide the trap-door from any prying eyes which might pass, and prying eyes must be few, he felt, or else the smugglers would not have had recourse to so clumsy a contrivance.
He thought all this over again, as he sat there wearied out and despondent, for in the morning his task had seemed as good as achieved, and now he was face to face with the fact, after all that labour, that it had been in vain, and he was more a prisoner than ever.
“Not quite so badly off as some, though,” he thought, as, moved thereto by the terrible hunger he felt, he stretched out his hand for the basket. Not bread and water, but good tasty provisions, and— “What’s this in the bottle?” he asked himself, as he removed the cork.
It was good wholesome cider, and being seventeen, and growing fast, Archy forgot everything for the next half-hour in the enjoyment of a hearty meal.