"That will not bother my plans," said Darling. "I don't intend to sail right into Chance Along, anyway. I want to pay a surprise visit. We'll find a bit of a cove along here somewhere, I think."
He was right. About a mile and a half beyond the Squid Rocks they found a little sheltered cove that was no more than a pocket in the cliff. The beach was narrow, and a glance disclosed the fact that at every full tide it was entirely submerged; but a "drook" or a narrow cleft, thickly grown with hardy bushes, led up from the land-wash to the barrens above. They lowered the sail and nosed their way into the cove. The streaming skirmishers of the fog were over them by this time. They beached the bully at the foot of the drook and made her fast.
"Keep everything aboard, and make yourself snug," said Mr. Darling. "Watch the tide. Haul in and back off with it; and, whatever you do, lie low and keep quiet. I am going to take a look at Chance Along—on the sly, you understand. You'll know all about it later. Don't worry if I don't get back within the next two or three hours."
"Ye bes after Black Dennis Nolan, sir," said Wick.
Mr. Darling nodded, placed two loaded pistols in his pocket and vanished up the tangled slope of the drook. Wick listened to the upward scrambling until it suddenly died away and fog and silence covered him deep like a flood. Then he filled and lit his pipe and sat down in the shelter of a tarpaulin to think it over. He sensed danger in the blind choking air. He felt anxiety for his companion and fear for himself; but curiosity and a natural courage fortified him to a certain degree.
Upon reaching the level of the barrens, Mr. Darling stood motionless for a little while and listened intently to the vague, fog-muffled breathing of the sea below him. He could hear nothing else. Turning to the south he moved silently forward along a well-worn path that traced the edge of the cliff. The fog was dense, and there was just enough wind to keep it drifting in from the sea. Darling held a boat-hook in his right hand and kept his eyes and ears alert. He heard a dog bark somewhere in front of him in the whitish-gray obscurity. Presently he came to where the path kinked and sloped down among a jumble of rocks, and at the same moment he caught the pungent, comforting smell of wood-smoke on the fog. Then he knew that Chance Along—the roof which sheltered Flora Lockhart—lay hidden and dripping beneath him. He was about to commence a cautious descent of the path, when a clamor of voices drifted up to him. He halted; and as the voices approached, together with the shuffle of climbing feet and the creak and clatter of shouldered boat-gear, he stepped aside. He saw the yellow blur of a lantern and immediately took up a position behind a great boulder. Bulky forms loomed into view at the top of the slope, broke from the blanketing fog for a moment, one by one, and plunged into it again, heading southward along the path. The big fellow in the lead carried the lantern, and the man at his elbow was talking excitedly as they passed within an oar's length of Darling.
"I's bin watchin' her these five hours back, skipper, a-tryin' to beat out o' the drift o' wind an' tide widout one entire mast a-standin'," he said. "She wasn't a half-mile off the rocks when I left the cove, an' a-firin' of her gun desperate. If she bain't stuck tight now, skipper, then me name bain't Tim Leary."
Mr. Darling stared and listened, as motionless as the boulder against which he leaned. They issued from the fog and were engulfed again in its clinging folds—twenty-five or thirty men and lads in all. Some carried coils of rope, others oars and boat-hooks. Several of them hauled empty sledges at their heels. The back of the last man vanished in the fog; but Mr. Darling remained in the shelter of the rock until the faintest whisper of their voices had died away before moving hand or foot.
"Organized wreckers," he muttered. "And that big pirate with the lantern was the skipper—the brute who is keeping Flora in this place! By God—I wonder just how much of a man, and how much of a beast he is! But now is my time, while they're all off waiting for another wreck to come ashore to them—damn them! The harbor must be about empty of able-bodied men just now."
He descended the twisting path cautiously. The small cabins of the fishermen presently loomed around him, here a gray gable, there a dull window, there an unpainted door—and below him a roof or two pushing up through the fog from a lower terrace of the village. He groped his way about, pausing frequently to peer and hearken. From one cabin came the sound of a child crying angrily, from another the harsh coughing of some very old person, and from still another the whining of a dog. He moved to the left, feeling his way gingerly between the humble dwellings. A lighted window caught his attention, and then a man's voice, with a whimsical drawl and twang to it, raised in song.