“I bet you he’s spouting

     ’Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—­roll! 
     Ten thousand fleets, etc.’”

said Graham laughing.

“What do you say to putting in to shore there?” said Duncan; “it’s only two miles to Starhaven, and I dare say we could make shift to take them in for that distance.  If Jim says anything we’ll chuck him overboard.”

They rowed towards Avon Glen, and to their surprise Wright, who stood there alone (for with a pocket telescope they clearly made out that it was Wright), still continued to wave his arms and beckon them in a manner which they at first thought ridiculous, but which soon make them feel rather uneasy.  Jim took an oar, and they soon got within two hundred yards of the beach.  Wright had ceased to make signals, but appeared to be shouting to them, and pointing towards one corner of the glen; but though they caught the sound of his voice they could not hear what he said.

“I wonder why Vernon isn’t with him,” said Eric anxiously; “I hope—­why, what are you looking at, Charlie?”

“What’s that in the water there?” said Wildney, pointing in the direction to which Wright was also looking.

Montagu snatched the telescope out of his hand and looked.  “Good God!” he exclaimed, turning pale; “what can be the matter?”

“O do let me look,” said Eric.

“No! stop, stop, Eric, you’d better not, I think; pray don’t, it may be all a mistake.  You’d better not—­but it looked—­nay, you really mustn’t, Eric,” he said, and, as if accidentally, he let the telescope fall into the water, and they saw it sink down among the seaweeds at the bottom.

Eric looked at him reproachfully.  “What’s the fun of that, Monty? you let it drop on purpose.”

“O never mind; I’ll get Wildney another.  I really daren’t let you look, for fear you should fancy the same as I did, for it must be fancy.  O don’t let us put in there—­at least not all of us.”

What was that thing in the water?—­When Wright and Vernon left the others, they walked along the coast, following the direction of the boat, and agreed to amuse themselves in collecting eggs.  They were very successful, and, to their great delight, managed to secure some rather rare specimens.  When they had tired themselves with this pursuit, they lay on the summit of one of the cliffs which formed the sides of Avon Glen, and Wright, who was very fond of poetry, read Vernon a canto of Marmion with great enthusiasm.

So they whiled away the morning, and when the canto was over, Vernon took a great stone and rolled it for amusement over the cliff’s edge.  It thundered over the side, bounding down till it reached the strand, and a large black cormorant, startled by the reverberating echoes, rose up suddenly, and flapped its way with protruded neck to a rock on the further side of the little bay.