"I doubt if that would happen unless it came on to blow a regular gale," he answered. "You see, the mouth of the cave is only a narrow opening, and, especially at high water, the seas would spend most of their force outside; still, as I've warned these men here, if once a big storm did get up, not a mother's son of them is ever likely to be heard of again. No," continued the speaker, "it's not being drowned I'm so much afraid of now as there being just enough sea running to prevent us getting out. These fools don't realize what a ticklish job it is except in still water. Let them try it in a stiff sou'-easterly breeze, and see how far they get! I'll wager my neck not one of them would ever set foot on shore again."
I stood gazing anxiously at that distant semicircle of light beyond which the sea was sparkling in the wintry sunshine. As I did so a fresh salt breeze swept through the cavern, and a miniature wave rolled up and spent itself against the mass of rock on which we stood. I was on the point of making some further remark to Lewis, when, in a sharp, peremptory manner, a voice behind us exclaimed,—
"Hark!"
The hum of conversation going on round the fire instantly ceased, while Lewis and I involuntarily turned sharp round to see who had spoken.
"Hist! D'ye hear anything?"
It was the blind man who spoke. His name was Mogger, and he sat a little apart from his companions, with his back against the rock wall of the cavern. From chance remarks let drop by the others, I gathered that he had been accustomed to beg for his bread with a dog, leading-string, and tin can. Associating with a set of rogues and vagabonds, he had at length become concerned in a robbery, and had been found guilty of receiving and concealing stolen goods. His loss of sight appeared to have been in a measure made up to him by an abnormally keen sense of hearing; in fact, the fellow's ears were as sensitive to sound as a dog's. Walking down the middle of a road, he declared that he could tell whenever he passed a house, or when he emerged from between two rows of buildings into the open country, and this simply by the change in the sound of his own footsteps. I mention this as giving additional interest to the incident which I am about to describe.
There was a moment of dead silence. The picture of that scene rises in my mind now as I write—the blind man sitting bolt upright against the rock with closed eyes, and his pale, expressionless face raised at an unusual angle, as though an unseen hand had gripped him beneath the chin; the group round the fire, for the instant rigid and alert, with heads half turned and mouths opened in the attitude of listening; while Rodwood's hand closed instinctively on a pistol which he had been cleaning, and had laid beside him on the rock. Thus, in the gloomy twilight of the cave we all remained motionless as the rock itself, until one of the men broke the spell with speech.
"What's the matter now?—more sheep?" he demanded gruffly, referring to the false alarm of the previous evening, at which several of his companions laughed.
The blind man made no reply, but remained in exactly the same attitude, like a person in a trance. On any occasion his conduct would have been disquieting and uncanny, but for hunted men there was something in it especially disturbing.
"Can't you answer, you dumb post?" cried Rodwood angrily. "If you hear anything, tell us what it is."