Joan did not answer, but she seemed to catch her breath, and, clutching hold of Eve, she made a spring up on to the wall over which they had before been looking. And now a succession of sharp cracks were heard, then the tongues of fire darted through the air, and again all was gloom.
"O Lord!" groaned Joan, "I hope 'tain't nothin's gone wrong with 'em."
In an instant Eve had scrambled up by her side: "What can it be? what could go wrong, Joan?"
But Joan's whole attention seemed now centred on the opposite cliff, from where, a little below Hard Head, after a few minutes' watching, Eve saw a blue light burning: this was answered by another lower down, then a rocket was sent up, at sight of which Joan clasped her hands and cried, "Awn, 'tis they! 'tis they! Lord save 'em! Lord help 'em! They cursed hounds have surely played 'em false."
"What! not taken them, Joan?"
"They won't be taken," she said fiercely. "Do you think, unless 'twas over their dead bodies, they'd ever let king's men stand masters on the Lottery's deck?"
Eve's heart died within her, and with one rush every detail of the lawless life seemed to come before her.
"There they go again!" cried Joan; and this time, by the sound, she knew their position was altered to the westward and somewhat nearer to land. "Lord send they mayn't knaw their course!" she continued: "'tis but a point or two on, and they'll surely touch the Steeple Reef.—Awh, you blidthirsty cowards! I wish I'd the pitchin' of every man of 'ee overboards: 'tis precious little mercy you'd get from me. And the blessed sawls to be caught in yer snarin' traps close into home, anighst their very doors, too!—Eve, I must go and see what they means to do for 'em. They'll never suffer to see 'em butchered whilst there's a man in Polperro to go out and help 'em."
Forgetting in her terror all the difficulties she had before seen in the path, Eve managed to keep up with Joan, whose flying footsteps never stayed until she found herself in front of a long building close under shelter of the Peak which had been named as a sort of assembling-place in case of danger.
"'Tis they?" Joan called out in breathless agony, pushing her way through the crowd of men now hastening up from all directions toward the captain of the Cleopatra.