Eben Megg had only just disappeared when the faint, monotonous cry of “Ahoy!” rose once more from below, setting the thoughts buzzing and throbbing about in Aleck’s brain in a most extraordinary way. For the lad felt utterly puzzled—he knew not why. He felt that there was something he ought to know, and yet he did not know it, and he failed to grasp the reason why he could not understand it. There was some mystery that he ought to clear up, he felt; but, all the same, simple as it was, he could not find it out.
Like the children playing at a nursery game, he was so close that he was burning, and at one moment he was on the point of being as wise as the smuggler, but just then a loud piercing whistle rang out, followed by answering shouts, and he did grasp at once from whence they came, and waited anxiously, fully expecting to hear more shouts, some of a triumphant character, telling that the fugitive was in view or perhaps caught.
“I oughtn’t to mind, of course,” he muttered, as he strained his ears to catch the next sound; “but somehow I do, and, as I said, for that poor woman’s sake. Ah! They’ve caught him now. No; it was only an order shouted. Why, they’re coming right up here—I can hear them plainly!”
The lad listened excitedly, for though he could see nothing of the sailors he could follow them by the sounds they made and tell that they had spread out over a good deal of ground in their hunt for the escaped man.
Nearer and nearer they came till Aleck felt that they must have reached the ledge from which he had watched the rippling sea, while directly after they were so near to the hiding-place that he could catch a good deal of what was said, the voices ascending and then seeming to curl over and drop down the steep rockside where he stood.
“They haven’t caught him yet,” thought Aleck, after some few minutes’ beating of the cliff-top and slopes had taken place. “Perhaps they won’t catch him, after all, for he must be as cunning as a fox about hiding-places. Why, they must be coming here!” he thought, excitedly, as the voices began to come nearer and nearer. “They’ll find me, for certain, and then—
“Well, what then?” he thought, as he came to a sudden stop. “Suppose they do catch me and ask me why I’m here! Why, I can tell them I came to try and find someone whom I heard calling for help; and I can’t help what Eben says, I must let the sailors help me then.”
He listened, and felt certain that the sailors and their leader came along as far as the great piece of rock he had been obliged to circumvent, and once round that the men were bound to find him.
“Ahoy!” came faintly again.
“Ahoy yourself!” said a voice. “Who’s that so far off? Some fellow has wandered right away and lost himself. Idiot! Why didn’t he keep within touch of his messmates? Ahoy, there! Ahoy! Ahoy!”