here
did they mean to take you, lad?"

"I don't know. Perhaps on board some ship to get me out of the way;"
and he briefly explained his late position, as they walked steadily on,
the men listening eagerly the while.

"Then you can take me right to the place, Mr Raystoke?" said Gurr.

Archy hesitated.

"I can point it out from the sea, but it will be all guess-work from the
shore."

"Never mind; we'll find it. But you can't think about where they were
taking you to-night?"

"I have no idea. Of course they blindfolded me, so that I should not
see the way out of the place I left, nor the way into the other."

"Ah, well, come on, and the skipper will talk to you. He has been fine
and mad about it, and I 'most think he's turned a bit thinner, eh,
Dick?"

"Ay, that he have," said the latter. "Leastwise you might think so."

"One day he's been all in a fret, saying you've run away, and that you'd
be dismissed the service, and it was what he quite expected; and then,
so as not to put him out, when you agreed with him, he flew out at you,
and called you a fool, and said he was sure the smugglers had murdered
his officer, or else tumbled him off the cliff."

Archy was too weary with excitement to care to talk much, and he tramped
on with the men, hardly able to realise the truth of his escape, and
half expecting to wake up in the darkness and find it all a dream. But
he was reminded that it was no dream, from time to time, by feeling a
hand laid deprecatingly upon his bruised arm, and starting round to see
in the darkness that it was Dirty Dick, who patted his injury gently,
and then uttered a satisfied "Hah!"

"Pleased to see me back," thought the midshipman, "but I wish he
wouldn't pat me as if I were a dog."

"Hullo!" exclaimed the master just then, as they came opposite a
depression in the cliff which gave them a view out to sea. "What's
going on? Forrard, my lads. Smart!"

The pace was increased, for away in the darkness there hung out a bright
signal which all knew meant recall, and the midshipman's heart throbbed
as he felt that before long he would be in a boat dancing over the
waves, and soon after treading the deck of the smart little cutter.

"No," he said to himself, as after a hail a boat came out of the
darkness, its keel grating on the pebbly shore, and he uttered a sigh of
content on sinking back in the stern-sheets; "it isn't a dream."

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

Archy Raystoke's sen