Page:The Firm of Gridlestone (1890).djvu/387

Rh the whole showed up so clearly in the bright morning air that the fugitives could see the green grass round the house and the coastguardsman at the signal station, who was strolling leisurely about and looking down from his elevation at their little craft. To the eastward of this chalk promontory was a large fine-looking town, which stretched in a wide semicircle round the shores of a curving bay.

"That's Beachy Head," said Sampson, pointing at the cliff. "It's the hoiest p'int down Channel, and they have a look-out place up there to report ships as pass. It was a Muster Lloyd as put it up. I doan't know who he be, that same Muster Lloyd, but he do seem to take a powerful deal of interest in everythink which has to do wi' shipping. He's an admiral belike, or something o' the sort."

Neither of the Girdlestones appeared inclined to enlighten him upon the point.

"What's the town?" asked Ezra.

"Eastbourne," the fisherman answered shortly, and lounged away into the bows, while his son remained at the tiller.

The two fugitives had their breakfast; but as it consisted of nothing more appetising than tinned corned-beef and ships' biscuits, and as neither of them had much inclination for food, it was not a very lengthy meal. Then they sat in the sheets once more, watching the grand panorama of green woodland and swelling down and towering cliff, which passed before them on the one side while on the other the great ocean highway was dotted with every variety of vessel, from the Portland ketch or the Sunderland brig, with its cargo of coals, to the majestic four-masted liner which swept past, with the green waves swirling round her forefoot and breaking away into a fork of eddying waters in her wake.

Ezra cautioned his father to sit down, for he observed a row of curious faces gazing at them over the quarter of one great vessel.

"Our dress isn't quite what you would expect to see in a