“What folly!” muttered Leslie, with his face growing rugged. Then quickly, “I don’t think you need feel alarmed; I dare say he has swum in for some distance, and our voices do not reach him. Stop a moment.”
He suddenly remembered a little gold dog-whistle at his watch-chain, and raising it to his lips he blew long and shrilly, till the ear-piercing note echoed along the cliff, and the gulls came floating lazily overhead and peering wonderingly down.
“I say, Harry, old man, come out now,” cried Pradelle, and then rising from his seat, he placed his hands on either side of his lips, and uttered the best imitation he could manage of the Australian call, “Coo-ey! Coo-ey!”
There were echoes and whispers, and the rush and hiss of the water. Then two or three times over there came from out of the opening a peculiar dull hollow sound, such as might be made by some great animal wallowing far within.
“Mr Leslie,” said Louise, in a low appealing voice, “what shall we do?”
“Oh, wait a few minutes, my dear Miss Vine,” interposed Pradelle, hastily. “He’ll be out directly. I assure you there is no cause for alarm.”
Leslie frowned, but his face coloured directly, for his heart gave a great throb.
Louise paid not the slightest heed to Pradelle’s words, and kept her limpid eyes fixed appealingly upon Leslie’s, as if she looked to him for help.
“I hardly know what to do,” he said in a low business-like tone. “I dare not leave you without some one to manage the boat, or I would go in.”
“Yes, yes, pray go!” she said excitedly. “Never mind us.”