CHAPTER XII

QUEER FISH

When Armstrong had started in the dinghy for a pull down the river his intention was to scull easily on the current to the mouth, then to turn westward, and exercise his muscles more strenuously in a contest with the wind. On reaching the coastline, however, he found that there was much more force in the breeze than had appeared inland, and a considerable swell on the sea, and he contented himself with hugging the shore, protected in some measure by the cliffs that swept round to a promontory in the distance.

After a stiff pull for half an hour or so he turned. The last faint radiance of sunset was behind him, and as he approached the river mouth, being himself shadowed by the cliffs, he noticed signs of activity about the fisher's hut on the beach beyond the farther bank. Two men were carrying what appeared to be fishing gear down to a boat at the water's edge. The weather seemed scarcely to promise good fishing, and, knowing from his friends that the hut was in the occupation, if not the possession, of Rush, he was sufficiently interested to decide upon watching the men's proceedings. He pulled a little more closely inshore, shipped his oars, and lay to under cover of a mass of rock.

In a few minutes the men got aboard the boat, and pulled out to sea in the direction of a small tramp steamer which was just visible on the eastern horizon, and, as the trail of smoke from its funnel showed, was coming down channel. It seemed to Armstrong a good opportunity for examining the hut; possibly he might find there some clue to Rush's mysterious activities. Assured that under the shadow of the cliffs he would be invisible to the boatmen, he pulled across to the opposite beach, and ran the dinghy ashore in a small, sheltered cove two or three hundred yards from the hut. Leaving the boat high and dry, he made his way back along the beach at the foot of the cliffs, and approached the hut, which stood on a rocky platform above high-water mark. As he neared it he was careful to keep it between himself and the boat at sea; Rush, if he were one of the two, was probably long-sighted.

By the time he reached the hut the boat was nearly a mile out, and the men appeared to be letting down a net. He slipped in through the open door, and threw a glance round the interior, seizing the last moments of twilight for his rapid scrutiny. He saw, as might have been expected, the usual fisherman's gear: old nets, lobster pots, cork floats, a broken oar, part of a rudder, an old sou'wester, baskets, ropes--nothing that had any particular interest or significance. But, just as he was about to leave, he noticed in the darkest corner half a dozen tins strung by the handles upon a length of trailing rope. Their shape suggested paraffin or petrol rather than any material useful to fishers; yet they were not the common petrol cans; they were larger and wider-necked than those that held the ordinary motor-spirit. He lifted one; it was empty, but very firmly corked, as likewise were the others.

Armstrong took one of the cans, stretching the rope, towards the door, to examine it more closely in what was left of the twilight. On the shoulder, enclosed in a panel, was an embossed description, the characters reminding Armstrong of the printed letters of the Russian newspaper.

"Rummy," he thought. "Gradoff, judging by his name, is a Russian, and the only Russian hereabouts. Yet we find a Russian newspaper in the cellar, and Russian petrol tins in Rush's hut. Queer!"

He replaced the cans, and left the hut. As he did so he saw, out at sea, the steamer he had noticed as a distant smudge some twenty minutes before. No smoke was now pouring from her funnel; apparently she had stopped or slowed down some distance beyond the small boat. While he was watching, the vessel went ahead. The small boat rowed farther out; then appeared to beat about for a time; finally stopped, and from the movements of the figures Armstrong saw aboard, they were lifting something from the water. The steamer, meanwhile, was proceeding steadily on her course down channel.

The growing dusk had rendered it impossible for the watcher to discern anything clearly; steamer, boat, and men were merely indistinct shapes. But the boat, without doubt, was the one that he had seen leave the beach; its movements were strange, and Armstrong decided to await its return. Who were its occupants? What was their errand? What were they bringing back with them?

The enlarging boat was evidently coming ashore. Armstrong looked rapidly around, and spied, close to the hut, and, between that and his own boat, a ridge of rock that would give him cover. Posting himself there, he waited. The dusk deepened. Presently he heard the faint, slow, regular thuds of oars in the rowlocks, then low voices. He could now discern the boat as a dark patch on the white crests of the rollers. It came steadily in, grounded; the two men sprang into the surf. The tide was going out. They did not haul the boat up, but lifted from it the bundles of gear and carried them into the hut. But there was no fish. They passed Armstrong's hiding-place near enough for him to recognise them. The first of them was Rush; the second--even in the dusk Armstrong knew again that broad, flat face. It was the face he had seen in the thicket--the face of the mysterious assailant Pratt had described.

After disposing of their gear in the hut, they returned to the boat. The stranger, a big man, came up again alone, bent under a bulky package, to which a string of petrol tins was attached. "Smugglers, by jiminy!" thought Armstrong. The package appeared to be encased in tarpaulin. The man halted at the door of the hut, let down his load, detached the cans, and waited. In a few seconds Rush joined him, helped him to hoist the package to his back, and bade him a gruff "Good-night." The man marched heavily up the beach to the east, towards a narrow rift in the cliff. Rush took the cans into the hut, shut and locked the door, and, with his hands in his pockets, moved slowly down towards his boat. Fearing that as he rowed back he might discover the dinghy in the cove, Armstrong hurried quietly away, shoved off, and had turned into the river when he heard the splash of Rush's oars. Pulling quickly but steadily, he was out of sight by the time Rush reached the mouth, and when he arrived at the camping-place guessed that he and Warrender could cross to the western shore of the island before Rush rowed past.

Such was the story Armstrong quietly told his companions as they sat on their chairs before the tent.

"Smugglers!" ejaculated Pratt, lowering his voice as if instinctively. "I thought the smuggling days were over long ago. D'you think Rush does a roaring trade in Dutch tobacco, and finds the foreign gang at the house good customers? Tobacco weighs light for its bulk. How big was the bundle, Jack?"

"Two or three feet square, I think," replied Armstrong. "But tobacco is light, as you say. I fancy this was something else, for Rush had to help the other fellow lift it."

"And he took it eastward up the cliff?"

"Yes, in the direction that would lead to your uncle's house, unless I'm out in my bearings."

"Well, I'm hanged! Won't my old uncle rave when he hears what his pet foreign domestics are up to in his absence! He's a terrible stickler for law and order, not the kind of man to wink at smuggling, as the county folk used to do in days of yore. That explains the light I saw."

"What light?" asked the others.

"I wended my way to the ruins to hear the spooks groan. They groan jolly well--a mellow note, mostly on B flat, I fancy, though it sometimes shrieks up a chromatic scale to what you may call vanishing point. Of course, it's caused by the wind, but what surprises me is how the wind can fetch such a musical tone out of a chimney-pot. It must be a tube of some sort, and what else could it be but a chimney-pot? I tried to find it, but that required an acrobatic feat too difficult for a man of my avoirdupois."

"But the light?" asked Warrender.

"Oh yes, I was forgetting! I was looking over towards my uncle's place when I saw a reddish sort of glow, just about the level of the tree-tops. It came and went, and presently it dawned upon my usually alert intelligence that it stood a good deal upon the order of its comings and goings; in fact, that it was a signal. It must have been just about the time that tramp steamer came in sight."

"But why on earth should anybody at the house, even if they are customers of Rush's, signal to the smuggling steamer?" asked Armstrong. "There aren't any revenue officers about here, and if there were any about the coast the people at the house wouldn't know anything about them."

"My dear chap, there are wheels within wheels," said Pratt, oracularly. "You have two contemporaneous phenomena--jolly good phrase, that!--the signal light, and the accosting of a tramp steamer by a poacher and a burglar. That's circumstantial evidence good enough for me."

"Well, drop theories, and come to practice," said Warrender. "Whatever the game is, we're going to find it out. It's time for us to take the offensive. These fellows have stalked us; it's now for us to stalk them. I vote we leave the island, and accept old Crawshay's offer. The enemy will chortle at having succeeded in driving us away, and will very likely be off his guard. Then we'll chip in."

"Just so; we'll _reculer pour mieux sauter_--you recognise the phrase, as your Gradoff would say? Your suggestion smiles to me, Phil. We carry it unanimously, and we'll strike camp the morn's morn. I say, listen!"

The wind had increased in force, and there came from the direction of the ruins the musical moan which Warrender, alone of the three, had not yet heard.

"'The horns of Elfland faintly blowing,'" quoted Pratt. "Really, it seems a pity, after all, to leave a spot which one can imagine the haunt of fairies, the seat of an enchanted palace, the----"

"Don't start the sentimental strain!" Armstrong interposed. "Suppose your horns of Elfland are a signal, too?"

"Jehoshaphat! What a synthetic mind you have, old bird! I shouldn't be surprised if---- But no! it won't wash. A signal that depended on the wind wouldn't be any good. Leave me some of my illusions, Jack. Let me revel in my romantic imaginings. Call it Roland's horn, appealing vainly for succour when the paladin was fighting fearful odds in the pass of Roncesvaux."

"I think you'd better turn in, old man," said Warrender. "It's your last watch to-night. We none of us got much sleep last night, and that crack on the head----"

"I'm cracked. All right--wake me at two-twenty."

He withdrew into the tent. His companions, tired though they were, resolved to keep each other company, and patrol the neighbourhood of the camp till it was time to awaken Pratt. Hour after hour passed. Nothing disturbed them. The wind increased to the force of half a gale, and the sound from the ruins persisted with scarcely a variation of pitch. When two-twenty came they agreed to let Pratt sleep on, and kept vigil until the eastern sky was streaked with dawn.

"D'you hear the sound?" asked Warrender, suddenly.

"No; it's stopped. But the wind is higher than ever," Armstrong replied.

"That's queer. The wind is in the same direction, too. Darkness and light oughtn't to make any difference."

"Perhaps it has blown the old chimney-pot clean off the roof. I'll go down and have a look presently. I'm dog-tired. We might take a couple of hours' sleep now, don't you think?"