Everything else was explained now—the havoc wrought at Falconhurst, and the deserted condition in which the Promised Land was found between the Swan Lake canal and the shore.
How could they cherish any but the faintest hope? So, while Captain Gould and the boatswain kept the natives in view, the others sorrowed together.
There was one last chance. Could the two families have taken refuge in the westward, in some part of the island beyond Pearl Bay? If they had caught sight of the canoes in the distance, across Deliverance Bay, might they not have had time to make their escape in the waggon, taking provisions and arms?
Captain Gould and John Block continued to watch the approaching savages.
Was it their intention to come into the yard? The house had been visited and pillaged by them already. Now they might discover the door at the foot of the staircase. In that event, however, they could easily be disposed of. For when they stepped out on to the platform they could be surprised, one by one, and hurled over the balustrade, a drop of forty or fifty feet.
“And,” as the boatswain remarked, “if after a tumble like that they had legs enough left to get to Rock Castle, the beasts would be more like cats than the monkeys they resemble!”
But when they reached the end of the avenue, the five men stopped. The watchers did not miss a single movement they made. What was their business at Falconhurst? If the aerial dwelling had escaped their observation so far, were they not now on the point of discovering it, and the people inside it? And then, they would come back in larger numbers, and how was the attack of a hundred natives to be withstood?
They came to the palisade and walked all round it. Three of them entered the yard, and went into one of the out-houses on the left, coming out again presently with fishing tackle.
“The rascals are a bit too familiar!” the boatswain murmured. “They don’t only not ask your leave——”
“Can they have a canoe on the beach, and are they going to fish along the shore?” said Captain Gould.