"No," replied the officer, with an amused look. "I prefer to get my insight from practice. I am pretty sharp-sighted," he added with complacency.
Robert Hunter had been weighing possibilities in his mind, and woke up as from sudden thought, turning to the supervisor.
"I should like to go down there and have a look at these rocks. My profession has taken me much amidst such places: perhaps my experience could assist you."
"Let us walk there now!" exclaimed the supervisor, seizing at the idea--"if not taking you out of your way, Miss Thornycroft."
"Oh, I should be delighted," was the young lady's reply. "I call it quite an adventure. Some fine moonlight night I shall come and watch here myself, Mr. Kyne."
"They don't do their work on a moonlight night. At least," he hastened to correct himself; with a somewhat crestfallen expression, "not usually. But after what happened recently, I shall mistrust a light night as much as a dark one."
"Are you sure," she inquired, standing yet within them on the plateau, "that a cargo was really landed the night you speak of?"
"I am not sure; but I have cause to suspect it."
"It must be an adventurous life," she remarked, "bearing its charms, no doubt."
"They had better not get caught," was the officer's rejoinder, delivered with professional gusto; "they would not find it so charming then."