"Thank you, Mr. Glover," the captain said. "At last there seems a chance of our picking up a prize this cruise. The question is, how did she get there?"
"I am pretty sure that we have passed no opening, sir. I have been aloft for the past half-hour, and have made out no break in the rocks."
"That is quite possible," the captain said, "and yet it may be there. We are a good three-quarters of a mile off the shore, and some of these inlets are so narrow, and the rocks so much the same colour, that unless one knows the entrance is there, one would never suspect it. At any rate we will hold on as we are for a bit."
The hail had set everyone on deck on the _qui vive_, and a dozen telescopes were turned upon the shore.
"Unlikely as it seems, Mr. Hill," the captain said, after they had gone on half a mile without discovering any break in the line of rock, "I am afraid that it must have been a flag-staff that you saw. There may be some plantation there, and the owner may have had one put up in the front of his house. However, it will be worth while to lower a boat and row back along the foot of the cliff for a mile or so, and then a mile ahead of us; if there is an opening we shall be sure to find it. Tell Mr. Playford to take the gig; Mr. Glover can go with him as he is the discoverer."
The boat was lowered at once, and as soon as the officers had taken their place the six men who composed the crew bent their backs to the oars, the coxswain making for a point on the shore about a mile astern of the frigate, which was lying almost becalmed. The men had taken muskets and cutlasses with them, for it was probable enough that a watch might have been set on the cliff, and that, should there be an inlet, a boat might be lying there ready to pounce out upon them as soon as they reached it.
Every eye was fixed upon the boat as she turned and rowed along within fifty yards of the foot of the rocks.
"I thought I could not have been so blind as to pass the entrance without seeing it," one of the sailors who had been on watch aloft said, in a tone of satisfaction. "Now, I don't mind how soon the boat finds a gap."
But when the boat had paddled on for another mile without a pause, a look of doubt and dissatisfaction showed itself on every face.