"I was only just using the pin of my brooch to burrow, as you were so sure there was a prickle there." Gheena re-pinned her brooch with hurt dignity. "Smuggle tobacco! One doesn't think of that kind of smuggling nowadays," she said bitingly. "It's smuggling German emperors and admirals and 'U' boats."
The lantern had suddenly been extinguished, and the noise of sucking, mingled with grunts of pain, came from the gloom beside her. A sound of footsteps coming cautiously could be heard on the strip of shingle at high-water mark.
"The coastguards," said Stafford. "Er--I say, hadn't you better?--they won't see us if you sit down. It's late."
Gheena replied that the last yell might even have produced the patrol ship from the point; and as she had known Matthew O'Hara and Tim Linsham all her life, she really did not see why they should not see her now, especially when they could not in that light.
So they sped lightly back across the rocks, unheard until Crabbit growled with emphasis.
Someone said "Shucks," in tones of distant alarm.
Stafford flashed the light again upon the spectacled, wondering face of Professor Machaffy of Bee-bar-oo, somewhere in New South Wales, who again said "Shucks," before he became a shadow in the gloom.
"I take a little walk almost every night," said the Professor mildly, "before I go in to sort specimens. It fills the lungs with ozone. And you! You also take a little walk." There was a distinct quiver of understanding laughter in his good-natured old voice.
"On fine nights the unseen world is very beautiful, because as a lost love, you remember all its perfections," went on the Professor. "The darkness is Zimmerian," he added blandly.
"Never quite lost the German accent, Professor?" said Basil easily. There was a pause; the Professor, judging by the shower of shingle, appeared to have kicked some of it.
"After several years' study--there," he said slowly. "It is difficult, Mr. Stafford. I'm learning, as in war they study closely," he added. "We have no such scientists in England. I bid you good-night. It is time for me to get in."
They could hear him chuckle again as he shuffled off.
One by one the lights at Castle Freyne were blinking out; Matilda Freyne was going to bed.