“What yer up to, matey?” cried Waters. “Ah! I know, sir. He was always a wunner after his grog, and he’s trying to make out whether they’ve landed and buried any kegs of brandy here.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried Hilary; “they would not do that. Come along, my lads. One moment. Let’s have a good look along the rocks for an opening. Can any of you see anything?”
“No, sir,” was chorused, after a few minutes’ inspection.
“Then now let’s make a straight line for the cliff, and all of you keep a bright lookout.”
They had about a couple of hundred yards to go, for the tide ran down very low at this point, and as they approached the great sandstone cliffs, instead of presenting the appearance of a perpendicular wall, as seen from a distance, all was broken up where the rock had split, and huge masses had come thundering down in avalanches of stone. In fact, in several places it seemed that an active man could climb up to where a thin fringe of green turf rested upon the edge of the cliff; but this did not satisfy Hilary, who felt convinced that such a place was not likely to be chosen for the landing of a cargo.
No opening in the cliff being visible, he spread his men to search right and left, but there was no sand here; all was rough shingle and broken débris from the cliff with massive weathered blocks standing up in all directions, forming quite a maze, through which they threaded their way.
“There might be a regular cavern about somewhere big enough to hold a dozen cargoes,” thought Hilary, as he searched here and there, and then sat down to rest for a few minutes, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, when it suddenly occurred to him that they had been hours away from the cutter, and that if he did not soon make some discovery he had better return.
“And I don’t like to go back without having done something,” he thought. “Perhaps if we keep on looking we may make a find worth the trouble, and—what’s that?”
Nothing much; only a little bird that kept rising up from a patch of wiry herbage at the foot of the cliff, jerking itself up some twenty or thirty feet and then letting itself down as it twittered out a pleasant little song.
Only a bird; but as he watched that bird, he did not know why, it suddenly went out of sight some twenty feet or so up the rock, and while he was wondering it came into sight again and fluttered downwards.