The Lost Middy Part 41

Turning away to look down the deep depression, he began to watch the birds again, when he was impressed by the cry of one which seemed to have settled, after pa.s.sing overhead, somewhere on the open beyond the ridge in which lay the niche containing the old lanthorn.

"Ahoy-oy-oy!" he cried, softly, trying to imitate, but with very poor success, the gull's querulous cry.

"Tah! tah! That's a jackdaw," said Aleck, half aloud. "Plain enough; but that mournful wail! It must be a different kind of gull.

Black-backed perhaps, with a bad cold through getting wet. I wonder whether a gull could be taught to talk! I don't see why not. Let's see, parrots can be taught, of course, and c.o.c.katoos learn to say a few words. So do jackdaws and starlings, but very few. Oh, yes! then there's the raven. Uncle said he knew of one at an old country inn that used to say 'Coming, sir,' whenever anyone called for the ostler. Then there are those Indian birds they call Mynahs. Uncle says that some of them talk beautifully. Hallo! There he goes again! It's just like 'Ahoy-oy-oy-oy!' Plain enough to deceive anyone if it came off the sea.

I'll wait till I catch sight of the gull that makes that noise, and next nesting-time I'll watch for some of the same kind and get two or three of the young ones to bring up. If they can say what sounds something like 'Ahoy!' so plainly it ought to be possible to teach one to say more."

Aleck sat and mused again, running over in his mind such gulls as he knew, and coming to the conclusion that unless it was some unusual specimen, of great vocal powers, it could not be the black-backed nor the lesser black-backed, nor the black-headed herring gull or kittiwake.

"I don't know what it is," he said, "but, whatever it may be, it's a good one to talk," and as he listened he heard the peculiar, weird, wailing cry again, sounding something like "Ahoy!"

"Gone now," said Aleck, half aloud, as he keenly watched in the direction of the cry, which had now ceased. "It might as well have flown over this way instead of down over the cliff. Hooray! There it goes!"

He shaded his eyes to follow the steady regular course of a large bronze black bird flying close down the trough-like depression, as close to the bottom as it could keep clear of the rocks, till it reached the end, where it dipped down towards the sea and disappeared.

"Well, I'm a clever one," cried the lad, with a scornful laugh; "lived ever since I can remember close to the sea, and been told the name of every bird that comes here in the winter and in the summer to nest, and didn't know the cry of an old s.h.a.g. Well, say that cry, for it was very different from the regular croak I know. He had been fis.h.i.+ng, having a regular gorge, and ended by swallowing a weevil. The little wretch set up its spines, I suppose, as it was going down and stuck, making the old s.h.a.g come up there to sit and cough to get rid of it. If ever I'm along with anyone who hears that noise and wants to know what it is I can tell him it's a s.h.a.g or a cormorant suffering from sore throat."

Aleck began to use the gla.s.s again, for the cutter's boat came into sight for a few minutes, before gliding along close in once more, to be hidden by the perpendicular cliffs.

"Gone," he said to himself. "Well, they will not find the poor fellow, for I don't believe they can search any better than we did. It's very dreadful. Nice, good-looking chap; as clever as clever. c.o.c.ky and stuck-up; but what of that? Fellow gets into a uniform and has a c.o.c.ked hat and a sword, it makes him feel that he is someone of consequence.

How horrible, though! Comes along with the boat ash.o.r.e over that press-gang kidnapping business, and the boat goes back without him. I wonder whether he was better off than I am, with a father and mother!

They'll have to know soon, and then I wonder what they'll say!"

Aleck gave another look round, sweeping the sea, and carrying his gaze round to the land, and then starting.

"There it is again!" he said, eagerly, as his eyes rested upon the distant black and white object inland. "Come, I can get a shot at you this time," he muttered, as, carefully keeping his eyes fixed upon the squat-looking object amongst the rocks, he slowly raised the gla.s.s. "I believe it must be a black and white rabbit. There are brown and white ones sometimes, for I've seen them, so I don't see why there shouldn't be black and white. Got you at last, my fine fellow. Ha, ha, ha," he laughed. "How absurd! Why, it's Eben Megg's wife; just her face with the patch of black hair showing above that bit of rock she's hiding behind. Why, she must be watching me. I know; poor thing, she's watching for me to go away so that she can come and look out to sea again for poor Eben."

Aleck closed his gla.s.s and rose to make his way back along the cliff and leave the place clear, a feeling of gentlemanly delicacy urging him to go right off and not intrude his presence upon one who must be suffering terribly from anxiety and pain.

"It seems so dreadful," he mused, as he went right on without once turning his head in the woman's direction; "but somehow it only seems fair that both sides should suffer. She's all in misery because her husband has been dragged away. Yes, he said he'd come back to her, but it's a great chance if she ever sees him again, and it's as great a chance whether that poor young middy's friends ever see him again. I don't like it, and it's a great pity there's so much trouble in the world. Look at poor uncle! Why, I don't know what real trouble is. I might have gone off to sea all in a huff after what uncle said, and then might have come back as badly off as poor old Double Dot. Well, I'm very, very sorry for poor Eben's wife, and--there I go again with my poor Eben. Why should I talk like that about a man who has the character of being a wrecker as well as a smuggler? He was never friendly to me and I quite hate him. But whether the King wants men or whether he doesn't, I just hate Eben so much that if he wanted to escape back to his wife and asked me to help him I'd do it; and just the same, if the smugglers had caught that young middy and were going to ill-use him--kill him perhaps--why, I'd help him too. It's very stupid to be like that perhaps, sort of Jack o' both sides, but I suppose it's how I was made, and it isn't my fault. Why, I say, it must be near dinner-time. How hungry I do feel!"

The coast was clear for Eben Megg's wife, and as soon as the lad was out of sight she once more made her way towards the cliff.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

Aleck went along the cliff the next day to look out for the boat, fully intending to turn back if he caught sight of Eben's wife; but as far as he could make out she was nowhere in that direction. Still he concluded that she might possibly come to the place she affected, so he determined to keep on his own side of the depression, lowering himself down to the shelf in which was the niche or crack, in the belief that he could get a fair view over the sea from among the scattered ma.s.ses of rock while being quite out of the woman's sight if she should come after all.

He swung himself down till he stood upon the shelf, and gave one hasty look round, to come to the conclusion directly after that if the poor woman sought his favourite look-out spot he could not have chosen a worse place, for he would be in full view, no matter where he crouched.

"I know," he said to himself; "I can get over here and lie down in the crack on the other side."

He began to climb, after making for the hole where the lanthorn and tinder-box still lay tucked tightly in beyond the reach of the wind; and the next minute, after making his way diagonally upward, he came upon the beginning of a steep narrow gully, going right down more and more deeply, so that forty or fifty yards away he could not see the bottom, the place having the appearance of being a vast crack formed by a sudden subsidence of the rocky cliff.

He was now out of sight from the other side of the great depression, and was just congratulating himself upon his selection of a hiding-place and look-out combined, when he recalled the sounds he had heard during a former visit.

"Why, it must have been caused by something falling down here," he argued, and he looked outward, to see that this was one of the narrowest, deepest and most savage-looking gullies he had seen, the place being giddy to look down and impressing him with the belief that the greatest care was necessary for anyone to move about; and as he dropped down upon his knees it was with a feeling of relief and safety, for accustomed though he was to climbing about upon the cliffs, this one particular spot looked giddy and wild.

To his great satisfaction he found that he could follow the crack right down to the sea and obtain a good view without being seen, unless anyone had followed his example and climbed; but what most took his attention was that though he had been climbing about the place often in search of the eggs of rare birds, he had never been there before, or noted the existence of such a deeply-split cavity in the cliffs.

"I must have been able to see it from off the sea," he argued, but gave himself up to the thought directly after that ridges and hollows had a completely different aspect when seen from below.

"I should know it now directly if I were sailing by and looked up, of course. I fancy I can recollect this steep wall-like bit down below where I'm sitting."

He started the next moment, for a great gull had come gliding up from behind and pa.s.sed so closely over his head that he was startled by the faint whizz of its outspread wings, while the bird itself was so startled that it uttered a hoa.r.s.e cry of alarm and plunged down head foremost like a stone.

"Why, that must have been the kind that made that cry like a hail,"

cried Aleck, as the bird disappeared into the depths of the gully, while he had hardly realised the thought before there rose from below a faint, hoa.r.s.e cry.

"I thought so," he said; "those birds have different cries and they sound strange, according to where you are."

He did not finish his words, for all at once the peculiar cry arose again, and this time it seemed to come from out of the deep jagged hollow, and certainly from the other side.

"How strange!" said the lad, with a feeling akin to dread running through him. "That can't be a bird."

He listened again, waiting for some minutes in the midst of the silence of the great wilderness in which he crouched.

Then "Ahoy!" came up, so clearly that there was no room for doubt, and Aleck's heart began to beat fast as thought after thought flashed through his brain.

"It must be someone calling," he felt and when after a few minutes the cry arose again, the thought struck him that it must come from somewhere beneath his feet, from an opening in the wall of the crack and then strike against the opposite wall, from which it was reflected, so that it seemed to come from that side, and from some distance away.

Aleck waited till the cry came across again, and then shouted in answer:

"Hallo there! What is it?"

There was no response. Then after a pause came "Ahoy!" once more.

"Where are you?" shouted Aleck, but there was no reply, and the result was the same when he tried over and over again.

"Whoever it is, he can't hear me," thought the lad, and growing excited now as he concluded that some fisherman, or perhaps a strange wanderer, had slipped, fallen, and perhaps broken a limb, he began to set about finding him and affording help.

Coming to the belief more fully that the sound came from beneath him, Aleck lay down upon his chest with his head over the brink of the rocky gash, and, holding on tightly, strained out as far as he could to look down. But he could see nothing, and rose up again to look to his left for the dying out in the solid cliff of the top end of the gorge.

That meaning a difficult climb, he made up his mind, to lower himself down over the edge, and setting his teeth, he began to lower himself over; but a slip at the outset so upset his nerves that he scrambled back, panting as if he had been running a mile.

"Nearly went down," he muttered. "That's not the way to help anyone who has just fallen."

He paused for a few moments to think about getting help from Eilygugg.

"There are no smugglers at home now," he said to himself, and his thoughts turned homeward.

"Uncle couldn't climb up here and handle ropes," he muttered; "and as for Ness--bah! he's a stupid muddling old woman.

"I must get right round somehow and see where the opening is," said the lad, at last. "But when I have found it, what then? I must get back here again; and then? Yes, I must have help and a rope. Oh, what a lonely old place this is when you want anything done! Bah! What a grumbler you are," he cried, the next moment. "You forgot all about Tom. He's sure to be over to-day, and I'll bring him with a rope."

This thought heartened the lad up, and he set off cautiously and quickly to get round by the head of the great rocky gash to the other side.

The journey was very dangerous and bad, but he was a good climber, and at the end of a dozen yards he was stopped by a great block which lay across his path with the portion to his right overhanging the gulf, forcing him to go round by the other end.