Going full cautiously, stopping every now and then to listen, I crept across the open space which lay between me and the cliffs. Bush and bracken broke the ground at intervals, and thus, with no clear path discernible in such a darkness, it behoved me to move warily, lest by stumbling I might warn instead of catch.
Thus going in and out among the shrubs and ferns, and ever moving like some beast of prey, I came at length upon the narrow path which runs along the cliff-top. There, beaten, and inclined to curse my foolishness, I stood straight up and listened.
A rabbit scuttered somewhere close at hand, the sea moaned plaintively upon the shore below me, but not another sound was to be heard; it seemed, indeed, as though the silence whispered of my folly!
Had, then, my eyes deceived me? Had a seething, maddened brain struck lights where no lights were! It seemed so; or, if not, the bearers of those lights had gone their way, for I was certain that I was not far from where they had thus strangely met and disappeared. Yes, truly, I was minded to call one Michael Fane a fool!
Stay, though, what was that? A hundred yards or so away, across the scrub, I caught the sudden twinkle of a lantern. With bated breath I watched it for a moment, then, dropping down upon the ground, moved towards it like a slinking tiger. Scarcely had I started ere the light vanished just as quickly as it came, but that did not stop me. On hands and knees, feeling for every bush, I crawled on through the darkness. The cracking of the tiniest twig seemed like a gunshot to my anxious, straining ears, my tight-held breathing like the roaring of a grampus.
So slow and stealthy were my movements that a score yards took near half as many minutes: and having covered double that without result except a good array of scratches, I had again begun to doubt my eyes and mutter at my folly, when, as I paused a moment to consider matters, a sound like that of humming voices reached me from ahead.
Kneeling, I listened breathlessly, and with an eagerness as though my very life depended on the act, and yet, for all I knew, it might have been but poachers setting out their snares; therefore 'twould seem indeed as though black fate and dread presentiment went hand in hand that night.
As near as I could tell, the voices came from a spot not far away, and straight ahead of me, but so low and muffled were they that 'twas no easy matter to judge rightly on this point.
For a time I knelt there listening with all my might, first cocking this ear and then that, but all in vain--not one word reached me: the buzzing hum continued in a maddening fashion; indeed, it might have been a hive of droning bees for all that I could make of it.
Down on all-fours I went again, and, with the sound to guide me, crawled towards it.