“Don’t speak or move,” he whispered; “but look down to the right. There’s some wild beast crawling up from the west end of the gap.”
Roylance gripped Syd’s hand to indicate that he saw the creature, and they remained silent, watching it creeping nearer and nearer, till it reached the spot where the men had been making their meal, and there it seemed to pause for a few minutes before returning the way it came.
It was so dark that its motions were more those of a shadow than of some living creature, and at last it seemed quite to die away among some loose rocks, just where the gap ended in a precipice.
“Gone,” said Sydney, drawing a long breath; “why, it was after the provisions.”
“Evidently. I couldn’t have thought that there were any live creatures here.”
“Looked like a great monkey.”
“Well, I thought so once—an ape, but it couldn’t have been.”
“I say,” whispered Syd; “was it a man, and they’re going to play some prank on us from the ship to see if we are on the look-out?”
“What’s that?” said a voice behind them, and the two lads started to find that the lieutenant had come up to them unawares while they were talking earnestly.
“We just saw something come up from that end of the gap, sir,” said Syd; “it was like a monkey.”