The Chief Officer went off to question the survivor, while the rest began their search.  They searched all that night; they burned flares and shouted; their torches dotted the cliffs.  After an hour the Chief Officer returned.  He could make nothing of the sailor, who had fallen silly from exhaustion or the blow on his head; but he divided his men into three parties, and they began to hunt more systematically.  Taffy was told off to help the westernmost gang and search the rocks below the light-house.  Once or twice he and his comrades paused in their work, hearing, as they thought, a cry for help.  But when they listened, it was only one of the other parties hailing.

The gale began to abate soon after midnight, and before dawn had blown itself out.  Day came, filtered slowly through the wrack of it to the south-east; and soon they heard a whistle blown, and there on the cliff above them was George Vyell on horseback, in his red coat, with an arm thrown out and pointing eastward.  He turned and galloped off in that direction.

They scrambled up and followed.  To their astonishment, after following the cliffs for a few hundred yards, he headed inland, down and across the very slope up which Taffy had crawled with the sailor.

They lost sight of his red coat among the ridges.  Two or three—­ Taffy amongst them—­ran along the upper ground for a better view.

“Well, this beats all!” panted the foremost.

Below them George came into view again, heading now at full gallop for a group of men gathered by the shore of the creek, a good half-mile from its mouth.  And beyond—­midway across the sandy bed where the river wound—­lay the hull of a vessel, high and dry; her deck, naked of wheelhouse and hatches, canted toward them as if to cover from the morning the long wounds ripped by her uprooted masts.

The men beside him shouted and ran on, but Taffy stood still.  It was monstrous—­a thing inconceivable—­that the seas should have lifted a vessel of three hundred tons and carried her half a mile up that shallow creek.  Yet there she lay.  A horrible thought seized him.  Could she have been there last night when he had drawn the sailor ashore?  And had he left four or five others to drown close by, in the darkness?  No, the tide at that hour had scarcely passed half-flood.  He thanked God for that.

Well, there she lay, high and dry, with plenty to attend to her.  It was time for him to discover the damage done to the light-house plant and machinery, perhaps to the building itself.  In half an hour the workmen would be arriving.

He walked slowly back to the house, and found Humility preparing breakfast.

“Where is he?” Taffy asked, meaning the sailor.  “In bed?”

“Didn’t you meet him?  He went out five minutes ago—­I couldn’t keep him—­to look for his brother, he said.”

Taffy drank a cupful of tea, took up a crust, and made for the door.