I felt deeply relieved when I saw no bodies, nor any stain upon the grass. I began to wonder what the night-riders had done with the coastguards; and, as I sat wondering, I heard, really and truly, a noise of the people talking from a little way below me, just beyond the brow of the cliff. That told me at once that there was a cave, even as I had suspected. I craned forward eagerly, as near as I dared creep, to the very rim of the land. I looked down over the edge into the sea, and saw the little blue waves creaming into foam far below me.
I could see nothing but the side of the cliff, with its projecting knobs of rock; no opening of any kind, and yet a voice from just below me (it seemed to come from below a little projecting slab a few feet down): a voice just below me, I say, said, quite clearly, evidently between puffs at a pipe, "I don't know so much about that." Another voice answered; but I could not catch the words. The voice I should have known anywhere; it was Marah's "good-temper voice," as he called it, making a pleasant answer.
"That settles it," I said to myself. "There's a cave, and the coastguards are there, I'll be bound, as prisoners. Now I have to find them and set them free."
Very cautiously I peered over the cliff-face, examining every knob and ledge which might conceal (or lead to) an opening in the rock. No. I could see nothing; the cliff seemed to me to be almost sheer; and though it was low tide, the rocks at the base of the cliffs seemed to conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for him at the end of his journey. Again I looked carefully right to the foot of the crag. No. There was absolutely nothing; I was off the track somehow.
Now, just at this point the cliff fell Inland for a few paces, forming a tiny bay about six yards across. To get along the cliff towards Strete I had to turn inland for a few steps, then turn again towards the sea, in order to reach the cliff. I skirted the little bay in this manner, and dropped one or two stones into it from where I stood. As I craned over the edge, watching them fall into the sea, I caught sight of something far below me, in the water.
I caught my breath and looked again, but the thing, whatever it was, had disappeared from sight. It was something red, which had gleamed for a moment from behind a rock at the base of the cliff. I watched eagerly for a moment or two, hearing the sucking of the sea along the stones, and the cry of the seagulls' young in their nests on the ledges. Then, very slowly, as the slack water urged it, I saw the red stem-piece of a rather large boat nosing slowly forward apparently from the cliff-face towards the great rock immediately in front of it. The secret was plain in a moment. Here was a cave with a sea-entrance, and a cave big enough to hide a large, seagoing fisher's boat; a cave, too, so perfectly hidden that it could not possibly be seen from any point except right at the mouth. A coastguard's boat could row within three yards of the entrance and never once suspect its being there, unless, at a very low tide, the sea clucked strangely from somewhere within. Any men entering the little bay in a boat would see only the big rock hiding the face of the cliff. No one would suspect that behind the rock lay a big cave accessible from the sea, at low tide in fair weather. Even in foul weather, good boatmen (and all the night-riders were wonderful fellows in a boat) could have made that cave in safety, for at the mouth of the little bay there was a great rock, which shut it in on the southwest side, so that in our bad southwesterly gales the bay or cove would have been sheltered, though full of the foam spattered from the sheltering crag.
I had found the cave, but my next task was to find an entrance, and that seemed to be no easy matter. I searched every inch of the cliff-face for a foothold, but there was nothing there big enough for anything bigger than a sea-lark. I could never have clambered down the cliff, even had I the necessary nerve, which I certainly had not. The only way down was to shut my eyes and walk over the cliff-edge, and trust to luck at the bottom, and "that was one beyond me"—only Marah Gorsuch would have tried that way. No; there was no way down the cliff-side, that was certain.
Now, somebody—I think it was old Alec Jewler, the ostler at the Tor Cross posting-house—had told me that here and there along the coast, but most of all in Cornwall, near Falmouth, there had once been arsenic mines, now long since worked out. Their shafts, he said, could be followed here and there for some little distance, and every now and again they would broaden out into chambers, in which people sometimes live, even now. It occurred to me that there might be some such shaft-opening among the gorse quite close to me; so I crept away from the cliff-brink, and began to search among the furze, till my skin was full of prickles. Though I searched diligently for an hour or two, I could find no hole big enough to be the mouth of a shaft. I knew that a shaft of the kind might open a hundred yards from where I was searching, and I was therefore well prepared to spend some time in my hunt. And at last, when I was almost tired of looking, I came across a fox or badger earth, not very recent, which seemed, though I could not be certain, to broaden out inside. I lay down and thrust my head down the hole, and that confirmed me. From up the hole there came the reek of strong ship's tobacco. I had stumbled upon one of the cave's air-holes.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CAVE IN THE CLIFF
My heart was thumping on my ribs as I thrust and wriggled my body down the hole. I did not think how I was to get back again; it never once occurred to me that I might stick in the burrow, and die stifled there, like a rat in a trap. My one thought was, "I shall save the coastguards," and that thought nerved me to push on, careless of everything else. It was not at all easy at first, for the earth fell in my ears from the burrow-roof, and there was very little room for my body. Presently, as I had expected, the burrow broadened out—I could kneel erect in it quite easily; and then I found that I could stand up without bumping my head. I was not frightened, I was only very excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco was very strong. I could see hardly anything—only the light from the burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two, and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip, splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For a moment I stood still, not certain which way to go. Then I settled to myself the direction from which I had heard the voices, and turned along the shaft on that side.
When I had walked a few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip, splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel nothing, and then downward on the far side, but could feel nothing; and then I knocked away a scrap of stone from the top of the wall, and it seemed to fall for several seconds before a faint splash told me that it had reached water. The shaft seemed to turn to the right and left at this low wall, and at first I turned to the left, but only for a moment, as I soon saw that the right-hand turning would bring me more quickly to the cliff-face from which I had heard the voices. After I had made my choice, you may be sure that I went on hands and knees, feeling the ground in front of me. I went forward very, very slowly, with the wet mud coming through my knickerbockers, and the cold drops sometimes falling on my neck from the roof. At last I saw a little glimmer of light, and there was a turning to the left; and just beyond the turning there was a chamber in the rock, all lit up by the sun, as clear as clear. There were holes in the cliff-face, one of them a great big hole, and the sun shone through on to the floor of the cave, and I could look out and see the sea, and the seagulls going past after fish, and the clouds drifting up by the horizon. Very cautiously I crept up to the entrance to the chamber, and then into it, so that I could look all round it.