"Yes," continued the skipper; "they'll be after something or another. Don Cousin is bound to take us by some means, and we must be on the look-out for a surprise. Can we wait till dark and slip out to sea again?" "No," said the mate abruptly; "I want broad daylight for anything like that. I couldn't take the schooner a quarter of a mile in the dark without getting her on the rocks." "I suppose not," said the skipper; "and I suppose it's no use to try and get higher up the stream?" "Not a bit," replied the mate. "The boats would follow us anywhere. I am very sorry. I've brought you into a regular trap, and there's only one way out, and the gunboat's sitting on it. But under the circumstances there was nothing else to be done. How I do hate these tea-kettles! But one must look the plain truth in the face. They can go anywhere, and we, who depend upon our sails, can't." "That's all true enough," said the skipper, "but it doesn't better our position. What I want to know is, how things are going on lower down. Now, if you lads, or one of you," he continued, turning to the boys, "could shin up that high cliff yonder you could see the boats and the gunboat too, and make signals to us so that we might know what to expect." "All right, father," said Poole sharply, and he glanced at Fitz as he spoke; "have me landed in the dinghy, and I'll go up and see." Fitz looked at the speaker, and his eyes said, "All right, I'll come with you;" but the skipper made no answer for a time, but stood shading his eyes and sweeping the face of the cliff, before dropping his hand and saying-- "How would you do it, my lad?" "Oh, by climbing up, father, a bit at a time, getting hold of the bushes and hauling oneself up sometimes." "Ah," said the skipper quietly. "You would be very clever if you did. It might be managed for a little way up, but all that upper part isn't perpendicular; it hangs right over towards us. Impossible, my lad. Nothing could get up there but a bird or a fly. We must give up that idea. Burgess, you will have to lower a boat and let her drift down to the headland there, stern on, and with the men ready to pull for their lives, as you may be fired at. When you get to the head you must let her slide along close under the bushes till you get a sight of the boats and see what they're doing." "Right," said the mate. "Now?" "Yes; the sooner the better." Poole glanced at Fitz, and then started to speak to his father; but before he could open his lips there was an emphatic-- "No! You would only be in the way, my lads. I want four strong men to row, and one in the stern to look out; and that one is Mr Burgess." "Very well, father," said the lad quietly, but he looked his disappointment at Fitz, whose vexation was plainly marked on his countenance, as he mentally said, "Oh, bother! He might have let us go."