Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/212

 of feet within it, followed by a splashing noise as someone leaped out and guided the bow out of water. After that the silence was over. Low voices murmured. Feet scuffled softly on sand or shingle. Although they could see nothing, their imaginations pictured the busy scene below: men, perhaps a half-dozen all told, bearing burdens from boat to shore, splashing through the ripples, grinding over the shingle, disappearing somewhere beneath, perhaps into a cave. The old tales of smuggling in the British Isles returned to memory and they had visions of a great, high cavern running back from the edge of the beach, a cavern piled with mysterious boxes and bales. But the cavern theory was quickly dissipated, for of a sudden footsteps sounded near at hand and they heard the labored breathing of men as they made their way up some unseen pass from below, and, once, a muttered exclamation and the trickling fall of a dislodged stone. It seemed to the boys that the men must be almost upon them, and they prepared themselves for flight, but the footsteps crunched past a dozen feet away and became soundless as they reached the rough turf of the summit. Then others followed. Whatever the burdens were that they bore up the cliff they must have been fairly heavy, for breathing was labored and the 187