“That’s because you wants yer dinner very bad, Master Aleck. You get indoors and have your salt beef and biscuit, or whatever your Jane has stowed away, and you’ll feel like a noo man.”
Chapter Twenty.
The party from the sloop-of-war came twice, led by the lieutenant, and had long and patient searches with Aleck in their boat ready to follow or lead the men into one or other of the openings in the rocks where the waves ran in with a peculiarly hollow echoing rush at low water, but which were covered deeply at half tide. These chasms were examined diligently, for the lieutenant had noted that the tide was very low when the attack was made. But nothing was discovered.
Aleck noted that the young officer looked very despondent on the second occasion, and the next morning when the lad went down to the smugglers’ cove to meet the boat, which he had sighted from his look-out place on the cliff, where with Tom’s help he had set up a spar ready for signalling, he found another officer in command of a fresh set of men.
The lad met them as a matter of course, feeling that his services would be welcome, but encountered a short, sharp rebuff in the shape of an enquiry as to who he was, and, upon explaining, he was told sharply to go about his business.
“Look here, sir,” said the officer, “I don’t want any natives to lead me on a false scent.”
“Very well,” said Aleck, quietly, and he climbed up the cliff again, and after noting which way the boat’s head was turned he went off beyond the smugglers’ cove and reached the great gap, where he descended to the shelf where he had found the lanthorn and tinder-box.
He had just reached it, when a figure started up and began to hurry inland, just giving him a glimpse of her face before she disappeared among the rocks, and he recognised Eben Megg’s wife.