The sailor got up unwillingly, and in obedience to the gunner’s orders they began now, in place of searching for traces of the smugglers, to look for their missing officer, scattering along, as fate had it, farther and farther from the spot where he had disappeared, no one seeing a face watching them intently through the thin wiry strands of a tuft of grass growing close up under the cliff.
The heat was now intense, for the sun seemed to be reflected back from the face of the rocks, and the men were regularly fagged.
They shouted and waited, and shouted again, but the only answer they got was from the echoes; and at last they stood together in a knot, with Billy Waters scratching his head with all his might, and they were a good half mile now from where Hilary had made his discovery and stepped into a trap.
“Well, this here is a rummy go,” exclaimed the gunner, after looking from face to face for the counsel that there was not. “Let’s see, my lads; it was just about here as he went forrard, warn’t it?”
“No,” growled Tom Tully; “it were a good two-score fathom more to the east’ard.”
“Nay, nay, lad; it were a couple o’ cables’ length doo west,” said another.
“I think it were ’bout here,” said Tom Tully; “but I can’t find that there track o’ the boat’s keel now. What’s going to be done?”
“Let’s go aboard again,” growled Tom Tully. “I’m ’bout sick o’ this here, mates.”
“But I tell yer we can’t go aboard without our orsifer,” cried the gunner. “’Taint likely.”
“He’d go aboard without one of us,” growled Tom Tully, “so where’s the difference?”