“What an idiot I am for an officer!” he cried. “Leading men and letting them bolt off in all directions like this. Suppose the smugglers should turn upon us now!”
“They would not have any one to turn upon,” he added, after a pause.
“Well, it’s all over with anything like a surprise,” he continued, after a time, “and we must get back to the place where we started from, if we can find it.”
“I’ll swear that was Ram,” he said, as he trudged on up a steep hillside; “and if they have caught him, we’ll make him show us the way. Stubborn brute! He was too much for me in the quarry, but out here with the men about, I’ll make him sing a different tune.”
“Where can they be?” he cried, after wandering about for quite half an hour. “Why! Ah!” he ejaculated. “I can see it all now. It was Ram, and he was playing peewit. The cunning rascal! Oh, if I only get hold of him!
“Yes; there’s no doubt about it, and he has been too clever for us. He was watching by the entrance, and just as the men got up, and would have found it, he jumped up and dodged about, letting the men nearly catch him, and then running away and leading them farther and farther on.”
“Never mind. I’ll get the men together, and we’ll go back to the place and soon find it. Oh, how vexatious! Which way does the sea lie?”
There was not a star to be seen, and the night was darker than ever.
He listened, but the night was too calm for the waves to be heard at the foot of the cliffs, and, gaze which way he would, there was nothing but dimly seen rugged ground with occasional slopes of smooth, short grass.
“Ahoy!” he cried at last, and “Ahoy!” came back faintly.