“We’ll go out without making a fuss,” said Andy to the others. “We don’t want to be smoked out again. That was horrid. I coughed all day and so did the rest of you.”
They squeezed out of the cave and stood up. The men blindfolded them quickly. Then once more they were pushed along the rocks, and made their staggering, stumbling way as before. Again they went to the left, and upwards, and again they came to a standstill, and heard the curious grating sound.
Then they were pushed into a darker place and knew they were inside the rocky hill. Before long they were in the same cave as before, looking out to sea from a great height, and heard the wooden door being bolted behind them.
“I dropped my
” began Jill in an eager voice, and broke off with a groan as Tom and Andy gave her sharp digs with their fingers. “Don’t! What did you do that for?”
Andy nodded his head towards the door. “You don’t know if any of them are behind, listening to what we may say,” he whispered. “Don’t say a thing till I nod my head at you.”
They all stayed silent for a while. Then, when Andy was certain their captors had gone, he nodded his head. “But speak low, all the same,” he said.
“I dropped my shells all the way,” whispered Jill. “I haven’t a single one left! They just gave out when we got here!”
“I’ve dropped all mine too,” said Mary. “I was so afraid the men would notice. Did you drop yours, Tom?”
“Of course,” said Tom. “I kept hearing mine drop too, and thinking the men would notice.”
“You’ve got very sharp ears,” said Andy. “Nobody else would hear those tiny shells dropping! I’ve got about four left. I was afraid I’d drop them all before I came to the place, and that would be sickening!”
“Well, we seem to have done all right between us,” said Tom in the same whisper that everyone was using. “We ought to be able to track down the trail here easily enough. We could get inside the hill then and snoop round and find out a lot!”
“I think we’ll have to do it at night,” said Andy. “The men will be about in the daytimebut at night I imagine they sleepexcept the man who flashes that light at the top of the hill.”
“Ooohat night?” said Jill, rather scared. “I wouldn’t like that!”
“Well, only Tom and I will go,” said Andy. “We will leave you cosily asleep in the cave, and get back to you before dawn. We’ll take your torches toothen we shall have plenty of light”
“I wonder if those fishing-boats are sailing all round and about, looking for signs of us everywhere,” said Tom. “I wish we had left something about, so that if they landed on the island, they would see it, and know we were here.”
“I’d thought of that,” said Andy. “But you may be sure the men would remove every single thing that might tell we were here. Dad won’t find anything. He’ll have to go back again to-day, with all the others, and report that there’s nothing to be found. I wish we could send some message to your mother. She’ll be so anxious.”
“Yes, she will,” said Jill. “She’ll never, never let us go out alone with you in a boat again, Andy! Last year we got wrecked in a storm, and had a tremendous adventure for weeksand this year we’ve got caught by smugglersif they are smugglers!”
“Well, we couldn’t help it,” said Andy. “How were we to know that there was all this going on in the Cliff of Birds and Smuggler’s Rock?”
Once more dry bread and meat was presented to the children by Bandy. This time it was ham. which tasted a lot nicer. Then, sooner than the day before, they were set free. But they were blindfolded just the same, and led. stumbling and unsteady to the rocks above the cove.
“I think your friends will now give up the search for you!” said the dark man in rather a nasty voice. “So you will be free to roam on the island. But you will find that steep, sheer rocks make it impossible for you to get round to the other side, so do not try. You may fall and be hurtand if so, we shall not help you.”
“What kind people you are!” remarked Andy. Bandy looked as if he would like to box his ears, but he didn’t. The men went off and left them alone.
Jill ran a little way up the rocks as soon as they were out of sight. She came back, her face pink with excitement.
“Our trail of shells is there, quite easy to see! You’ll be able to follow them well, Tom and Andy. They stretch up over the rocks,” said Jill. “I can make out the trail for quite a long way!”
“Well, I hope the men don’t spot it then,” said Andy. “We’ll do a bit of tracking tonight. Tom, It will be most exciting!”
CHAPTER 18.
A Queer Midnight Journey.
THE boys thought they would not start following the trail till about midnight Then they could be fairly certain that the men would be asleep. They decided to try and go to sleep themselves for a few hours first, so that they would not be too tired.
“I’ll keep awake for you, and wake you at midnight, if you like,” said Jill. “I’ve got a watch. If I have the lamp on, I know I shall keep awake.”
“No. It’s all right. I shall wake at midnight,” said Andy, who was one of the clever people able to wake himself at any time he planned. “We can all go to sleep.”
So they cuddled up in their rugs, put their heads down on the cushions they had brought from the boats, and were soon asleep and dreaming.
At midnight, just as he had said he would, Andy awoke. He sat up and switched on his torch. Almost twelve o’clock! He shook Tom hard and woke him.
“Oooh!” said Tom and woke with a jump.
“Sh! Don’t wake the girls!” whispered Andy. “It’s time for us to go. Buck up!”
“Give me Jill’s torch,” whispered Tom. “You know mine’s no use. I must have a torch.”
Andy handed him one. Then the boys squeezed out of the cave and stood on the windy hill. It was cold and dark. Clouds covered the night sky.
“Now to pick up the trail!” said Andy, and shone his torch cautiously down, shading it with his fingers so as not to show too much light.
They soon picked up the trail of pink shells which gleamed brightly in the torch-light. The boys made their way over the rocks, following the shells easily. There was one bit where the trail broke, and they went wrong, but they soon came back to the trail, and found the right way.
“We must all have stopped dropping shells at the same moment.’” said Tom, thinking it was queer to find such a gap. “But it wasn’t much of a gap. Come on.”
They went on and on. round to the left and upwards. Then the trail of shells suddenly stopped.
“This is where we must have gone inside,” said Andy and he shone his torch on the rocks that towered beside him just there. But there was no way in at all. The wall of rock stood there, unbroken. There was no entrance into the hill.
“Funny!” said Andy. “Perhaps the trail goes on after all. Perhaps we’ve come to a gap again, where none of us threw down shells! I’ll go on and see. You stay here and shine your torch out now and again, so that I shall know where to come back to, if I can’t find any more shells.”
He soon came back. “There’s no more to be seen,” he said. “This must be where we went in. But how in the world can anyone walk through solid rock!”
He shone his torch on the rocky wall again. He discovered a crack of about an inch wide, that seemed to go inside the hill.
“Funny!” said Andy, and shone his torch up and down the crack. “Look, Tomthis crack seems the only way into the hillbut how could anyone squeeze through a crack like that? We certainly didn’t!”
The boys tried to find some other place to get in, but there was none. They were forced to come back to the same place once more. Andy remembered something.
“Do you remember the funny noise we heard?” he asked Tom. “Sort of grating noise. I wonder if by any chance this rock movesyou know, like the stone moved in the Open Sesame cave in the tale of All Baba and the Forty Thieves.”
“But how could we move a heavy, rocky wall like that?” said Tom.