“He’s wandered off.  Oh, say you’ve seen en, somebody!”

Catching sight of Taffy, she ran and gripped him by the arm.

“You’ll help!  It’s my Joey.  Help me find en!”

He turned half about, and almost before he knew what he sought his eyes met George’s.  George stepped quietly to his side.

“Let me get my mare,” said George, and walked away toward the light-house railing where he had tethered her.

“We’ll find the child.  Our work’s done here, Mr. Saul!” Taffy turned to the Chief Officer.  “Spare us a man or two and some flares.”

“I’ll come myself,” said the Chief Officer.  “Go you back, my dear, and we’ll fetch home your cheeld as right as ninepence.  Hi, Rawlings, take a couple of men and scatter along the cliffs there to the right.  Lame, you say?  He can’t have gone far.”

Taffy, with the Chief Officer and a couple of volunteers, moved off to the left, and in less than a minute George caught them up, on horseback.

“I say,” he asked, walking his mare close alongside of Taffy, “you don’t think this serious, eh?”

“I don’t know.  Joey wasn’t in the crowd, or I should have noticed him.  He’s daring beyond his strength.”  He pulled a whistle from his pocket, blew it twice, and listened.  This had been his signal when firing a charge; he had often blown it to warn the child to creep away into shelter.

There was no answer.

“Mr. Vyell had best trot along the upper slope,” the Chief Officer suggested, “while we search down by the creek.”

“Wait a moment,” Taffy answered.  “Let’s try the wreck first.”

“But the tide’s running.  He’d never go there.”

“He’s a queer child.  I know him better than you.”

They ran downhill toward the creek, calling as they went, but getting no answer.

“But the wreck!” exclaimed the Chief Officer.  “It’s out of reason!”

“Hi!  What was that?”

“Oh, my good Lord,” groaned one of the volunteers, “it’s the crake, master!  It’s Langona crake calling the drowned!”

“Hush, you fool!  Listen—­I thought as much!  Light a flare.  Mr. Saul—­he’s out there calling!”

The first match spluttered and went out.  They drew close around the Chief Officer while he struck the second to keep off the wind, and in those few moments the child’s wail reached them distinctly across the darkness.

The flame leaped up and shone, and they drew back a pace, shading their eyes from it and peering into the steel-blue landscape which sprang on them out of the night.  They had halted a few yards only from the cliff, and the flare cast the shadow of its breast-high fence of tamarisks forward and almost half-way across the creek, and there on the sands, a little beyond the edge of this shadow, stood the child.

They could even see his white face.  He stood on an island of sand around which the tide swirled in silence, cutting him off from the shore, cutting him off from the wreck behind.