“I don’t seem to know you,” said the man beside him at last, after they had hauled up several packages and kegs. “Did old Allstone send you to help?”
This was a poser, and Hilary paused for a moment or two before saying frankly:
“No; he didn’t want me to come.”
“Ah! he’s a nice ’un,” growled the other. “I wish I’d my way; I’d make him work a little harder. He’s always skulking up at the old manor.”
Hilary uttered a low grunt, and in the intervals of hauling he strained his eyes to grasp all he could of his surroundings; but there was very little to see. He could make out that he was at the edge of a lower part of the cliff; that the rock-strewn beach was, as far as he could make out by the hauling, some forty feet below; that the platform where he stood was the sea termination of a gully, where probably in wet weather a stream ran down and over the edge in a kind of fall, while on either side the cliff towered up to a great height.
There was not much to learn, but it was enough to teach him what he wanted to know, and it quite explained the success of the smugglers in evading capture.
Hilary had strained his eyes again and again seaward; but, save that the cutter’s lights were burning brightly in the darkness, there was no sign of coming help, though, for the matter of that, a fleet of small boats might have landed and been unseen from where he stood.
The man’s suspicions seemed to have been lulled, and Hilary kept on hauling. The men came and went from where they were to the carts that he judged to be waiting, and those below, like dim shadows just seen now and then, toiled on over the rocks, but still no sign of the cutter’s boats, and in despair now of my such capture as might have been made, Hilary was thinking that when a suitable opportunity occurred he would seize hold of the hook with one hand, retain the hauling rope in the other, and let himself rapidly down, when there was a shrill chirruping whistle from below, the scrambling of feet, and a voice from the beach said sharply:
“Quick there! Luggers ahoy! Look out!”