They might have fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds' eggs, or they might have been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might have been capsized and drowned while they stole his boat--he called it "stole"-- in any one of which cases, he said to himself, they'd never have come back to the Crag again, and it wouldn't have been any business of his, so he wasn't going to worry his brains.

Old Jarks had grabbed 'em, and when he grabbed anything he didn't let it go again.
Joe Daygo was a slow thinker, and all this took him a long time to hammer out; and he had just settled it comfortably, on his way home, when he caught sight of the pilot flag flying, and paid no heed.
"Don't ketch me showing 'em the way through the Narrers to ketch the _Shark_!" he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a wind taking him on a very dangerous lee shore.
So the old fisherman did not look at his passengers, but began thinking hard again.

He couldn't take those two home, he said to himself, for, if he did, at their first words he'd be seized by some one or every one, for they all hated him for being so well off, and monopolising so much of the lobster catching, especially Jemmy Carnach.

Then Sir Francis Ladelle and the Doctor would come; he'd be locked up, sent by the smack over to England, and be tried, and all his savings perhaps be seized.
Just, too, when he had a chance of doubling them by taking the contents of the cave.
He had arrived at this point with great difficulty when the strange silence on board the boat, which had so far only been broken by the lapping of the water and the creaking of the yard, was broken by Vince, who cried excitedly, as he stood up in the boat: "Look, look, Mike! Nearly everybody's yonder on the cliff.

They've heard the firing and the explosion, and they're watching the cutter chase the schooner." Mike rose too, and with beating hearts the two boys stood trying to make out who was on the look-out; but the distance was too great to distinguish faces.