There were plenty of capital places here where a strong-headed person could go and perch and excite no more notice than a sea-bird. They were what ordinary inshore folk would have called “terribly dangerous,” but such an idea never occurred to Aleck, who selected one of the most risky, in a spot where the vast wall where he stood was gashed by a great crack, which allowed of a descent of some thirty feet to a broad ledge littered by the preenings of the sea-birds, which seemed, though none were present, to have made it their home.
It was a delightful spot for anyone who could climb to it without growing giddy; but there was no going farther, for the angle of the ledge was quite straight, and when the lad peered over he was looking straight into the gurgling, foaming and fretting water a hundred feet below.
“What a boat cove that would have made,” he thought, “if there were not so many sharp rocks rising from the bottom! I shouldn’t like to try and take my kittiwake in there, big as it is.”
The gloomy place, with its black shadowy niches and caves at the surface of the water, had a strange fascination for him. In fact, with its solemn twilight and irregular crag, arch and hollow, it looked quite an ideal entrance to some mermaid city such as is described by the poets who deal in fable.
But there were the two little men-o’-war to watch, and Aleck drew back a step or two from the edge to select a comfortable seat, where the colour of the rock which rose up behind was likely to assimilate with his garments and not throw him up as a plainly-seen watcher if a telescope were directed shoreward from one of the vessels.
“I wonder whether the smugglers ever come here,” thought Aleck, as he looked at the face of the rock in a spot that just suited his purpose; and then he laughed to himself and felt no doubt at all, for there, just level with his face, and about eighteen inches within a crack in the rock, a shabby old horn lanthorn was wedged, and just below it was a tinder-box and a square wide-mouthed bottle, well corked, evidently to protect its contents from the spray which would come rushing up from below in a storm, the contents being so many thin slips of wood, whose sharply-pointed ends had been dipped in molten brimstone.
“One of their look-outs,” he said to himself, as he turned again to sit down, but only to start and crouch upon his knees in surprise; for close up to the rock wall, half hidden by a tuft of sea-pink and grey sea holly, was a very old ragged black silk neckerchief, folded and creased as if lately torn off, and bearing strange rusty dark stains, dry and unpleasant-looking, and with very little consideration Aleck settled in his own mind that, if it were not the kerchief Tom had torn from his neck to wind round the smuggler’s wound, it was as like it as could be.
It did not look a nice thing to take up and handle, but the lad bent lower, before rising up to say, decisively:
“It must be, I’m sure, for I almost seem to know the holes. Then Eben must have been here this morning watching for the press-gang people.”
Another thought flashed across the lad’s brain directly: