The soft close turf grew to the very verge of the shore and wall-like cliff, and as the searchers proceeded along the giddy summit, seeking for traces of feet and hallooing from time to time, the utmost caution was necessary for their own safety.
Gradually they drew near the chine.
"Hallo—what is this?" exclaimed Mr. Basset, as he trod on something; "a hat—and near it, a kid glove."
They picked them up, and recognised Morley's light grey "wide-awake," and a glove supposed to be his, all uncertainty about the first-mentioned article being ended, by their perceiving his name written on the lining thereof.
Proceeding with greater care, a little farther on they found his cigar-case, and a few feet below, near the edge of the cliff, the ends of two half-used cigars.
"I told you he was enjoying a quiet weed," said Hawkshaw.
Mr. Basset and the gardener made no reply; but with eyes and lanterns close to the ground, were breathlessly examining several footmarks impressed in the soft gravelly soil and sea grass about the mouth of the chine.
"For Heaven's sake, take care, sir," exclaimed the gardener, whom the scene, the place, the hour, and the awful booming of the black sea in the profundity four hundred feet below, appalled. "But look here, sir," he added almost immediately; "oh, sir, look here!"
Two deep ruts in the gravel, as if formed by a man's foot slipping downwards, and two places from which the grass had been recently torn away by hands that had clutched them evidently in despair, showed but too plainly and too terribly that some one had fallen over there.
"Look here, captain—look here!" continued the excited gardener.