Thus mounted and accoutred, I dug my heels into the flanks of the great horse, and, in the breaking dawn, made along the rocky track which the butler had pointed out as leading to Five Fingers.
“If nothing can be done,” said I, as I left, “I will return here.”
“Dear send we shall see you no more then,” said the old man.
Along the road which led from Malin village to the promontory rapid progress was impossible, and but that I hoped to have better use for my horse later on, I could almost have gone as well on foot.
As the early May dawn lifted, I could get glimpses of the sea lying calm on my left, with a light breeze off the land stirring its surface.
“That is in favour of the Dutchman,” groaned I.
Not a human being, scarcely a wayside hut, did I see during that tedious ride, as my lumbering beast stumbled over the loose stones and plashed his way, fetlock deep, through the bog. At length I came to the place which the butler had described as the spot where I was to turn off the road and make by a grass track for the sea-level.
A short way down this latter path brought me to a corner which opened a sudden view of the sea to northward. Gazing eagerly in that direction, the first sight which met my eyes was a brig, with all sails set, standing out to sea before the wind, about a mile or two from the shore.
Too late! I had expected nothing else, but the certainty of it now drove me into a frenzy of wrath. I flung myself from the horse and strode, pistol in hand, towards the deserted shore. There, except for hoof-marks, which convinced me three horses had passed that way, there was no sign of living being. By the tracks I could almost fix the spot at which the party had put off, doubtless in one of the brig’s boats. Of the return track of the horses I could find nothing, and judged that they had been taken off either at the edge of the water, which the tide had subsequently covered, or up one of the hard rocky tracks towards the foreland.
Along one of these, which seemed the most likely, I went for some distance. It brought me out on to the cliff-top, but disclosed no trace of what I sought.