"Nothing much," replied Withers. "Only a reminiscence. This cliff recalled it."
He paused, his eyes fixed seaward.
"Let's have it, old son," prompted Branscombe.
"I thought I saw a vessel's masthead light out there," declared the Second Engineer. "Must have been mistaken.... The yarn? Oh, it was merely an incident. It was in '14, just after war broke out. I was on a collier awaiting orders at Whitby. Everyone was on thorns over the spy scare. Well, one night, there was a report that lights were flashing on the cliff, and a crowd of fellows went off to investigate. Having nothing better to do that evening, I went too. Sure enough there were lights about every half minute. About two miles from Whitby we ran full tilt into a couple of men striking matches, so they were promptly collared."
The narrator paused and looked seaward again.
"What happened?" asked Burgoyne.
"Nothing—they were released," replied Withers.
"I can't see anything funny in that," remarked Phil.
"Well, it was funny—and pathetic, too," explained Withers. "They were deaf mutes. One lived in a small cottage near Kettleness, and the other's home was in York. They had missed the last train for Kettleness and were walking along the cliff path to Whitby. Their only means of communicating with each other was by lip-reading, and since it was dark they stopped and struck matches whenever they wanted to converse. They had used up three boxes of matches by the time we came up. Poor blighters! As likely as not they didn't know there was a war on; if they did it was obvious they hadn't heard about the regulations concerning coastwise lights. But, by Jove! surely those are vessel's steaming lights?"
"It is, by smoke!" exclaimed Burgoyne. "A steamer going south. I can just distinguish her port light."