I'll stay."

"Nay, yer won't, my lad. I'm not going to leave yer. I don't want to
know afterward as yer chucked yerself down that hole, despairing like.
You're going away with me."

"I'm going to stay till help comes to get poor Gwyn out."

Hardock shook his head.

"Go and tell them what's happened."

"I dursent," said the man, with a shiver.

"You go at once."

"What! and tell the Colonel his boy's dead? That I won't, my lad. He'd
be ready to kill me."

"Go to my father, and tell him. He'll break the news to Colonel
Pendarve; and you go on then to the village, to collect men and ropes."

"They wouldn't come."

"Oh, have you no feeling in you, at such a time?" cried Joe. "You are
only thinking about yourself. You must--you shall go on. What's that?"

The boy started and stood staring wildly at his companion, for a
faintly-heard cry reached their ears, and Hardock's face grew mottled,
sallow, white, red and brown.

"Sea-bird," he said at last hoarsely, after they had waited for a few
moments, listening for a repetition of the cry.

"I never heard a sea-bird call like that," said Joe, in a husky whisper.
"It wasn't a gull, nor a shag, nor a curlew."

"Nay, it warn't none o' they," said Hardock, in a whisper. "I know all
the sea-fowl cries. I thought it was one o' they big black-backed
gulls, but it warn't that."

"Can you make out what it was, then?"

"Yes; it was something we don't understand, making joy because some one
as it don't like has been drownded."

The boy felt too much startled and excited to pause and ridicule his
companion's superstitious notions, and he took a few steps quickly to
the rough, square wall, from a faint hope that the sound might have come
from there; but as he touched the wall, a strong grip was on his
shoulder.

"No, yer don't," growled Hardock. "You keep back."

"But that cry!" panted Joe.

"It didn't come from there. It was sea way."

"Yes; there it is again!"

Sounding more faint and distant, the strange cry floated from away to
their left, and a strange thrill ran through Joe Jollivet, as he yielded
to the man's hand, and suffered himself to be drawn right away from the
mouth of the hole.

"Yes, I heard it," said Hardock, in a low tremulous voice, and with a
look of awe, which accorded ill with the man's muscular figure. "Don't
you know what it was?"

"No; do you? Could it be Gwyn calling for help?" The man nodded his
head and spoke in a low