“They wouldn’t come.”
“Oh, have you no feeling in you, at such a time?” cried Joe. “You are only thinking about yourself. You must—you shall go on. What’s that?”
The boy started and stood staring wildly at his companion, for a faintly-heard cry reached their ears, and Hardock’s face grew mottled, sallow, white, red and brown.
“Sea-bird,” he said at last hoarsely, after they had waited for a few moments, listening for a repetition of the cry.
“I never heard a sea-bird call like that,” said Joe, in a husky whisper. “It wasn’t a gull, nor a shag, nor a curlew.”
“Nay, it warn’t none o’ they,” said Hardock, in a whisper. “I know all the sea-fowl cries. I thought it was one o’ they big black-backed gulls, but it warn’t that.”
“Can you make out what it was, then?”
“Yes; it was something we don’t understand, making joy because some one as it don’t like has been drownded.”
The boy felt too much startled and excited to pause and ridicule his companion’s superstitious notions, and he took a few steps quickly to the rough, square wall, from a faint hope that the sound might have come from there; but as he touched the wall, a strong grip was on his shoulder.
“No, yer don’t,” growled Hardock. “You keep back.”