“Perhaps he’s close by somewhere, watching me.”
This thought produced a very uncomfortable feeling, and Aleck was divided between two forces which pulled different ways. One was to—as Tom Bodger called it—look out for squalls, the other to sit down quite calm and unconcerned to watch the vessels.
“I can’t help it if Eben does fancy I’m watching his proceedings; he must feel that I should be longing to know what is going on. No, after last night I’m sure he won’t think I should make signals to the ships. Why should I? There’s nothing to signal about.”
He focussed and re-focussed the glass, and held its larger end towards the sloop and placed one eye at the little orifice; but the left would not close and the right would not look at the sloop, but persisted in rolling about in every direction in search of Eben, who, the boy felt certain now, must be crouching back in one of the rugged clefts watching every movement he made.
Aleck did the best he could to look calm and unconcerned, but anyone who had seen him from near at hand would have pronounced it as being a dismal failure.
Then all at once he started. Down went the glass, and he craned forward towards the edge of the shelf to look down, for all at once there was a hoarse rumbling sound and a tremendous plash and crash as if a mass of rock had fallen from somewhere beneath him right into the rock-strewn gully below.
He could not resist the desire to lie down upon his breast and edge himself forward till his face was over the edge and he could look right down into the water, which was all in motion, swaying and eddying, foaming round the half-submerged blocks of weed-hung stone, and behaving generally according to its custom as the tide went and came, for these chasms displayed little change, the water being very deep and never leaving any part of the bottom bare.
There was nothing fresh to see, and after a time the lad drew back, to resume his old attitude with the glass to his eye.
But he had hardly settled down again before he experienced a slight quivering sensation, as if the cliff had suddenly received a blow, while directly after there was a deep roar as of stones falling along some vast slope. Then once more silence, with the water whispering and gurgling far below.
“Part of the cliff given way,” thought Aleck, as he called to mind places here and there where masses of the rocky rampart which guarded the western shores had evidently fallen, and about which he had heard traditionary stories. But these falls had taken place in far distant times. No one that he had heard speak of them could go farther back than chronicling the event as something of which “my grandfather heered tell.”