"Heaven be between us and all harm, but it must have been a ghost!"
"He could not have got to the Hole in the time."
"Not if he had wings."
"Did you ever see Fahey? Of course you did. You told me about him."
"Merciful Lord, it was Fahey!"
The two men looked mutely into each other's faces. Anything like a regular conversation was now impossible owing to the force and noise of the storm.
O'Brien had had a theory. The events of the last two minutes had shattered his theory to atoms. The two policemen who had seen Fahey jump into the Hole had not been mistaken. It was no ghost they saw. They had tracked their man as surely as they had ever tracked any one on whom they laid hands. He, being innocent, was suspected of a crime; or, rather, he had innocently, in ignorance, committed a criminal act, and being pursued and hard pressed, had flung himself headlong into that awful pit. Within a couple of weeks or so, O'Hanlon had seen that same figure in this place, and now he (O'Brien) had seen such a figure, and Phelan had identified it. This was monstrous. What came of all his inquiries respecting the Whalers Mouth and the accessibility of the cave? Nothing--absolutely nothing. His theory was childish. He was glad he had spoken of it to no man.
What was to be his theory now?
Phelan was stupefied, and stood staring at the cliffs and the rock as if he expected them to undergo some stupendous change, display some more incomprehensible marvel. O'Brien stood back a few paces from the brink, and kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, which had lowered and come nearer.
Suddenly Phelan stepped back to O'Brien, and, putting his mouth close to the ear of the other, shouted--