Chapter Twenty Eight.The next morning, as it seemed from the beautiful limpid appearance of dawn that rose from the surface of the waters, to become diffused in the soft gloom overhead, the lads lit a candle and set off manfully to try as to the possibility of making their way out through the zigzag passage, Aleck trying first and dragging and pushing at the stones which blocked his way, till, utterly exhausted and dripping with perspiration, he made way for his comrade to have a try.The latter toiled hard in turn, and did not desist till he found that his fingers were bleeding and growing painful.“It’s of no good,” he said, gloomily; “that scoundrel has done his work too well. Let’s get down to where we can breathe. I say, though,” he added, cheerily, “I’ve learned one thing.”“What?” asked Aleck.“That I was never cut out for a chimney-sweep. This is bad enough; I don’t know what it would be if there was the soot.”They slid down, and as soon as they were back in the comparatively cheerful cavern, where they could breathe freely, Aleck proposed that they should look out amongst the sails and ships’ stores for a suitable rope for their purpose.There was coil upon coil of rope, but for the most part they were too thick, and it seemed as if they would be reduced to venturing upon their dive untrammelled, when, raising the lanthorn for another glance round, Aleck caught sight of the very piece he required, hanging from a wooden peg driven in between two blocks of stone.“Looks old and worn,” said the middy, passing the frayed line through his fingers. “Let’s try it.”The means adopted was to tie one end round a projection of the rocky side, run the line out to its full length, and then drag and jerk it together with all their might.Satisfied with the effects of this test, the rope was untied, the other end made fast, and the dragging and snatching repeated without the tough fibres of the hemp yielding in the least.“Looks very old,” said the middy, “but wear has only made it soft. If it stands all that tugging with the weight of both of us on the end it will bear one of us being dragged through the water, where one isn’t so heavy. Now, then, are we going to try this way?”“Certainly,” said Aleck.“Very well; who’s to go first?”“I will,” said Aleck.“I don’t know about that,” replied the middy. “You’re only a shore-going fellow, while I’m a sailor. I think I ought to go first.”“It doesn’t much matter who goes first, but I spoke first and I’ll go.”“Look here,” cried the middy; “if I give way and let you have first try, will you play fair?”“Of course. But what do you mean?”“You won’t brag and chuck it in my face afterwards that you got us out of the hole?”“Do you think I should be such a donkey?” cried Aleck. “Why, look here, I’m going to try and chance it, but I don’t believe I shall get through. Never mind about who’s to be first. Let’s do all we can to make sure of escaping. Now, then, shall we try now, or wait till the water’s at its lowest? It’s going down now.”“If we wait till the tide’s at its lowest it will be slack water, and we shall get no help. It’s running out now, and we can see the shape of the arch.”“Yes, and how rugged and weed-hung it is. I say, I don’t like the look of it. You’d better go first.”“Very well,” said the middy, promptly, and he began taking off his jacket.“Hold hard,” cried Aleck, hurriedly stripping off his own. “Come along.”He led the way to the edge of the water where, though not the nearest, the best leap off seemed to present itself, and then stood perfectly still, gazing down into the softly illuminated water, quivering and wreathing as it ran softly out, and looking dim and blurred through being kept so much in motion by the retiring waves.“Then you still mean to go?” said the middy.“Of course. But what shall I do—strip, or try in my clothes?”“Strip, decidedly,” cried the middy.“I shall get scratched and scraped going under the rocks.”“You’ll get caught by them and hung up if you keep your clothes on. Have ’em all off, man; you’ll slip through the water then like a seal.”“Yes,” said Aleck, calmly, “I suppose it will be best.”It did not take him long to prepare, and as soon as he was ready his companion made the rope fast just round beneath the arm-pits with a knot that would neither slip nor tighten.“There!” said the middy, as he finished his preparations by laying out the rope in rings and curves of various shapes, such as would easily run out. “I say, you are perfectly black when I look at you from behind, but in front you seem like a white image on a black ground. Now, then, what do you mean to do?”“Dive in from here and try to keep right down and swim as deeply as I can for the mouth.”“Try to swallow the job at one mouthful?”“Yes.”“Won’t do,” said the middy, authoritatively. “You couldn’t do it. You must slip in gently here and swim to that rock that’s just out of the water.”“What! That one that seems just to the left of the arch?”“That’s the one. Get out on it, wait a few moments, and then take a long, deep breath and dive.”Aleck pondered for a few moments.“Yes,” he said, “I think you’re right. I should have had to swim so far first if I started from here.”“To be sure you would. The less diving you have the better.”“I see,” said Aleck. “Now, then, let the rope run out easily through your fingers till I give it a sharp jerk. That means pull me back as fast as you can.”“Yes, because you can go no further.”“If I pull twice it means I am safe through, and then—”“I shall tie my end of the rope round my chest and come too. You need not pull, only just draw in the line, unless it stops, because that would mean I had got into difficulties. Do we both understand? I do.”“So do I,” said Aleck, “so let’s get it over. If I wait much longer I shall be afraid to go.”“Don’t believe you,” said the middy, bluntly. “Now, then—ready?”“Yes.”The word was no sooner uttered than Aleck slipped down into the water and began to swim, with the rope being carefully paid out by his comrade, and in a minute he was fairly started. He was at first invisible, but very soon began to look like a black object making its way over a surface that grew transparent.Then all at once the rope ceased to run.“What is it?” cried the middy, anxiously.“Got to the rock.”“Is the water deep?”“Very.”“Well, get up, ready for your dive.”“It’s all seaweed, and horribly slippery.”“Never mind; up with you.”A peculiar splashing sound arose, and the middy could just make out the dim shape of his companion climbing, or rather dragging, himself on to the slimy rock, whose top was about a foot above the surface of the water.“Stop a minute or two first,” said the middy, “so as to take—”He was going to say “breath,” but before the word could be uttered Aleck, who had drawn himself up to stand erect, felt his feet gliding from under him, and it was only by a violent effort that he escaped falling heavily upon the weed-covered rock. As it was he came down with a tremendous splash into the water, going head first in a sharp incline down and down, while, obeying his first impulse, he struck out sharply.The middy was about to obey his first impulse too, and that was not to pay out, but begin to haul his comrade back. His hands tightened round the line, but as he awoke to the fact that it was gliding through his hands in obedience to the regular pulsation of the movements of a swimmer, he felt that all must be right, and waited while, foot by foot, the rope glided on and the transparent water grew more and more agitated and strange to see.Once he fancied he could clearly make out Aleck’s steadily swimming figure, but directly after he knew it was a great, waving, flag-like mass of weed fronds, and he uttered an impatient gasp and turned cold.“He couldn’t have got his breath for the dive,” he said to himself, “and the current must be taking him helplessly away. Half the line must have run out, and perhaps he’s insensible. No; that means swimming, for it goes in jerks, and—he has stopped. He must be through. Hooray! Well done, old—oh, that’s the signal to pull him back!”It was surely enough, and the middy began at once to haul in, and then the cold feeling became a chill of horror, for he had drawn the rope quite tight at the second haul, and it was perfectly evident that the swimmer had signalled because in some way he was caught fast.What to do?The middy was energetic enough, and in those perilous moments, full of horror for his companion’s sake, he hauled till he dared pull no more for fear that the rope should part, and, obeying now a sudden thought, he relaxed the strain, and the rope seemed to be snatched back towards Aleck.“That can’t be a signal,” he said to himself, in despair; but he began to haul again, recovered the line lost, and to his intense delight he found that the swimmer was once more free, and that he was drawing him rapidly back to where he stood. The lad’s action was as rapid now as he could pass hand over hand, and in a very short space of time he had the poor fellow close up to the rock edge, and then, taking hold of the rope where it passed round Aleck’s chest, he dragged him out, half insensible, upon the rocks.Another half minute or so might have been fatal, but Aleck had some little energy left, and, after a strangling fit of coughing, he was able to sit up.“Take—the rope off!” he panted.This was done, and in a few minutes he was breathing freely and able to talk.“I didn’t get a fair start,” he said, hoarsely. “I slipped, and went in before I was ready; but I got on all right for a bit till I seemed to be sucked in between two pieces of rock, and felt myself going into black darkness. Then I signalled to you.”“I hauled directly.”“Yes, and it seemed to drag me crosswise so that I couldn’t pass through between the two rocks again. How did you manage then?”“I did nothing, only let go so as to make a fresh start.”“Did you?” said Aleck, quietly. “Ah, I didn’t know anything about that. I only knew that it was very horrible, and I thought it was all over. It was very near, wasn’t it?”“Oh, I don’t know,” said the middy, coolly. “You say that you didn’t have a fair start?”“No; it was that fall. But it’s queer work. You can’t make out where you are going, and the current grinds your head up against the weedy rock.”“But you got nearly through, didn’t you?”“I suppose so, but I don’t know. It was all one horrible confusion.”“Yes; but another few yards, I expect, and you would have been safe, and could have pulled me through, or helped me as I swam.”“Perhaps,” said Aleck, rather slowly, for he felt confused still. “But what are you doing?”“Peeling off my clothes.”“What for?” said Aleck, speaking now with more animation.“To do my turn, and see how I get on.”“No, no, no!” cried Aleck, excitedly. “You mustn’t try. It’s too horrible.”“Horrible? Nonsense. It’s only a swim in the dark. I like diving.”“I tell you it can’t be done, sailor,” cried Aleck, angrily. “The risk is too great. I should have been drowned if you had not hauled me out.”“Well, and if I’m going to be drowned you’ll haul me out. You’re strong enough now, aren’t you?”“Oh, yes; but you mustn’t risk it.”“You wait till I get these things off, my lad, and I’ll show you. Why, you’d have done it splendidly if you had dived off the rock instead of going in flip-flap like a sole out of a basket. I’ll show you how to do it.”“You’d better take my word for it that it can’t be done. Let’s wait till the tide’s low enough, and then swim out in daylight.”“You wait till I get out of my uniform,” said the middy, stubbornly, “I’ll show you, my fine fellow. I’ve practised diving a good deal. Some day, if we get to the right place in the ocean, I mean to have a go down with the sponge divers, and if I’m ever in the South Seas I mean to try diving for pearl shell.”“Well,” said Aleck, rather sadly, “I’ve warned you, and I suppose it is of no use for me to say any more?”“Not a bit,” said the middy, dragging off his second stocking. “You make fast the dry end of the line round my noble chest. Not too tight, mind, and a knot that won’t slip.”The young sailor possessed the greater will power now, for Aleck was yet half stunned by what he had gone through. He obeyed every order he received, and carefully knotted on the rope.“Now, are you ready?” said the middy. “Feel up to hauling me back if I don’t get through?”“Yes.”“And, mind, when I am through I shall not drag you. No, no, don’t untie your end of the rope; you’ll want that. Now, do you understand?”“Yes.”“Very well, then, as soon as I’m through I shall get on a dry rock and signal to you to come. Then you’ll slip in and swim to the rock again, and take a header off it. Don’t bungle it this time, and when you feel my touch at the rope, mind it’s not meant to haul, only to guide you to where I’m sitting.”“But what about our clothes?” said Aleck, drearily.“Bother our clothes! We want to save our skins and not our clothes. Now, then, ready?”“Yes, if you will go.”“Will go? Look here!”The lad sprang, feet foremost, into the water, and rose directly from out of the depths, to strike out, and as Aleck tried hard to follow his movements, he heard him reach the weedy rock, drag himself out, and the rope was gently drawn more and more through his hands as the middy succeeded in getting erect upon the stone, close to its edge.“See that?” he shouted.“Yes.”“That’s what you ought to have done. Now, then, slacken the line well. I’m taking a long, deep breath, ready for you know what. That’s it. Ready—ho!”The middy sprang into the air, and very dimly Aleck saw that he curved himself over, and the next moment his hands divided the water, and he plunged in for his dive almost without a splash, while as the rope ran swiftly through his hands Aleck felt a flash of energy run through him, and stood ready for any emergency that might befall.Then a feeling akin to jealousy came over him, as he found the rope drawn out vigorously, and it seemed to him that the midshipman was a far better swimmer and diver than he.“But he hasn’t come to the difficult part yet,” he thought, the next moment. “He’ll find that he can’t keep down deep, and that while he is trying to beat the tangling wrack to right and left something like a current sucks him upward and forces him against the rocks that form the arch.”Then, full of eagerness so as to be ready to help the diver when his time of extremity came, Aleck held the rope attached to him with both hands gingerly enough to let it pass easily through as wanted, but at the same time, in the most guarded way, ready to let it fall against his right shoulder when, as he intended, he turned sharply to walk swiftly back into the interior of the cavern and draw his companion back to the water’s edge.Then a curious thought struck him, consequent upon the rope beginning to run out faster and faster.“Why, he’s getting through,” he cried, mentally, with a suggestion of disappointment in his brain at his comrade’s better success. “He’s getting through, and he’ll run out all the line quickly now and draw me in.“Well, so much the better,” he thought. “If he can pass through I can, and perhaps in a few moments we shall both have escaped.“Wish I’d done something about our clothes,” he muttered then. “We shall want them, of course. But, I know; we can hide somewhere about the mouth of the cave till it gets dark, and then I can take him up to the Den, and—”Aleck did not finish the plan he was thinking out, for the rope had seemed to him to be running out to a far greater extent than he had taken it himself; but in reality it had gone away at about the same rate, so that something like the same quantity had been drawn through his hands when it suddenly ceased to glide, and directly after a spasm shot through the lad’s brain, for it had stopped, and directly after the signal was given sharply, sending a thrill through him.He responded directly by clutching the rope tightly and beginning to run.It was only a beginning, for he was brought up short on the instant, and so sharply that he was jerked backwards.“Just the same as I must have been,” he said to himself, excitedly, after bearing hard against the rope and finding it quite fast. “It’s like conger fishing,” he thought, “and I must give him line.”Slackening out at once, he waited for a moment or two, and then tightened again, when to his great delight he found that he was no longer dragging at something set hard, but at a yielding body, which he drew easily to the edge of the pool by means of his long coil, before dropping it and running to seize and repeat the middy’s performance upon himself.“He’s quite insensible,” he gasped, as he drew the dripping lad right out on to the driest part.“That I’m not,” panted the middy; “but another minute would have done it.”He remained silent then, panting hard and struggling to recover his breath, while Aleck untied the line and set his chest at liberty to act as it should.Then for some minutes nothing was said, the only sound heard being the middy’s hoarse breathing as he laboured hard to recover his regular inspirations.At last he spoke in an unpleasantly harsh, ill-humoured way.“Well, aren’t you going to have another try? It’s lovely. Only wants plenty of perseverance.”“Not I,” replied Aleck. “You don’t seem to have got on so very well.”“Got on as well as you did,” snarled the middy. “Ugh! It was horrid. Just as if, when I felt that I could hold my breath no longer, I was suddenly seized and sucked into a great sink-hole, only the water was running up instead of down.”“Yes, that’s just how I felt,” said Aleck.“You couldn’t have felt so bad as I did,” said the lad, irritably and speaking in the most inconsistent way. “I got my head rasped, too, against the stones overhead, and it’s bleeding fast. Look at it, will you?”Aleck examined the place, after opening the door of the lanthorn.“It isn’t bleeding,” he said.“Don’t talk nonsense,” cried the middy, irritably. “It smarts horribly, and I can feel the blood trickling down the back of my neck.”“That’s water out of your hair.”“Are you sure?”“Yes, certain. I can’t even see a mark on your head.”“Well, there ought to be,” grumbled the lad. “Aren’t you going to have another try?”“No. Are you?”“Not if I know it,” replied the middy. “Once is quite enough for a trip of that kind.”“I don’t think it’s possible to get out by swimming.”“Well, it doesn’t seem like it; but the smugglers get in.”“Yes, at certain times.”“Then this is an uncertain time, I suppose!” said the middy, beginning to dress.“Hadn’t we better get round and have a good rub with a bit of sail?” asked Aleck.“No; we can’t carry our clothes without getting them wet, and if we don’t take them it means coming all the way round here again. Let’s dress as we are; the salt water will soon dry.”“Very well,” said Aleck, and he followed his companion’s example with much satisfaction to his feelings, listening the while to the middy’s plaints and grumblings, for he had been under water long enough to make him feel something like resuscitated people, exceedingly discontented and ill-humoured.Every now and then he burst out with some disagreeable remark. One minute it was against his shirt for sticking to his wet back; another time it was at Aleck for getting on so fast with his dressing consequent upon his being drier; and then he began to abuse Eben Megg.“A beast; that’s what he is. It’s just as bad as murdering us with a knife or chopper, that it is.”They were dressed at something like the same time, Aleck having achieved his task quietly, the middy with a sort of accompaniment of grumbles and unpleasant remarks.“There,” he said, at last; “that seems to have done me a lot of good. There’s nothing like a good growl.”“Got rid of a lot of ill temper, eh?” said Aleck, smiling to himself.“Yes, I suppose that’s it. But, I say, we’re not going to try that way out again! I say it’s perfectly impossible.”“So do I,” said Aleck.“We should both have been drowned if it hadn’t been for the rope.”“That we should, for a certainty,” replied Aleck. “Well, there’s nothing to be done but to wait patiently for the coming of that low tide when a boat could come in, as Eben Megg said, and as it’s plain it does, or else all these stores couldn’t have been brought in.”“And when it does come?” said the middy.“We shall swim or wade out, of course,” said Aleck.“No, we shan’t,” grumbled the middy. “You see if it doesn’t come in the night, when we’re asleep.”“We must be too much on the look-out for that,” said Aleck.“It will not come all at once, but by degrees—lower and lower tides, till we get the one we want; and till then we shall have to be patient.”“Hark at him!” said the midshipman. “Who’s to be patient at a time like this? Well, I’m beginning to feel warm and dry again; what do you say to getting back and having dinner, or whatever you like to call it? Oh, dear! Eating and drinking’s bad enough on ship board, but it’s all feasts and banquets compared to this.”“We must try to improve it,” said Aleck. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to catch fish.”“What? You don’t suppose fish would be such scaly idiots as to come into a hole like this?”“Perhaps not, but I believe they’d be shelly idiots enough. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised, if we had a lobster or crab pot thrown out here, if we caught some fine ones.”“Set one, then,” said the midshipman, sourly. “Perhaps there is one.”“Not likely,” replied Aleck. “Never mind, let’s make the best of what we’ve got and be thankful.”“No, that I won’t,” cried his companion. “I’ll make the best of what we’ve got as much as you like, but I must draw the line somewhere—I won’t be thankful.”“I will,” said Aleck, good-temperedly; “thankful enough for both.”“Come on,” said the midshipman, gruffly.“Wait a moment till I’ve coiled up the line loosely. We may want it, and it must be hung up to dry.”This was done, and then after noting that the water was growing deeper in the direction of the sea entrance, the pair made their way right round by the head, stopped at the spring to have a hearty drink, and then pressed on, lanthorn in hand, to their resting-place, where, thoroughly upset by his adventure, the midshipman grumbled at everything till Aleck burst into a hearty laugh.“Hallo!” cried his companion, eagerly; “let’s have it. Got a bright idea as to how to get out?”“No,” said Aleck, “I was laughing at the comic way in which you keep on finding fault.”“Humph! Well, I have been going it rather, haven’t I?”“Doing nothing else but growl.”“That’s the worst of having a nasty temper. Don’t do a bit of good either, does it?”“Not a bit,” said Aleck. “Makes things still worse.”“Think so?”Aleck nodded.“Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ll drop it then. Now, then, what do you say to having a good long snooze?”“I’m willing,” said Aleck, “for I’m thoroughly tired out.”“Put out the light then. My word, what a good thing sleep is!” said the midshipman, after they had lain in silence for a few minutes. “Makes you able to forget all your troubles.”There was a pause, and then the midshipman began:“I say it makes you able to forget all your troubles, doesn’t it?”Still silence.“Don’t you hear what I say?”No answer.“Hanged if he isn’t asleep! How a fellow can be such a dormouse-headed animal at a time like this I don’t know.”He ought to have known, a minute later, for he was lying upon his back, fast asleep and breathing hard, dreaming of all kinds of pleasant things, some of which had to do with being feasted after getting free.
The next morning, as it seemed from the beautiful limpid appearance of dawn that rose from the surface of the waters, to become diffused in the soft gloom overhead, the lads lit a candle and set off manfully to try as to the possibility of making their way out through the zigzag passage, Aleck trying first and dragging and pushing at the stones which blocked his way, till, utterly exhausted and dripping with perspiration, he made way for his comrade to have a try.
The latter toiled hard in turn, and did not desist till he found that his fingers were bleeding and growing painful.
“It’s of no good,” he said, gloomily; “that scoundrel has done his work too well. Let’s get down to where we can breathe. I say, though,” he added, cheerily, “I’ve learned one thing.”
“What?” asked Aleck.
“That I was never cut out for a chimney-sweep. This is bad enough; I don’t know what it would be if there was the soot.”
They slid down, and as soon as they were back in the comparatively cheerful cavern, where they could breathe freely, Aleck proposed that they should look out amongst the sails and ships’ stores for a suitable rope for their purpose.
There was coil upon coil of rope, but for the most part they were too thick, and it seemed as if they would be reduced to venturing upon their dive untrammelled, when, raising the lanthorn for another glance round, Aleck caught sight of the very piece he required, hanging from a wooden peg driven in between two blocks of stone.
“Looks old and worn,” said the middy, passing the frayed line through his fingers. “Let’s try it.”
The means adopted was to tie one end round a projection of the rocky side, run the line out to its full length, and then drag and jerk it together with all their might.
Satisfied with the effects of this test, the rope was untied, the other end made fast, and the dragging and snatching repeated without the tough fibres of the hemp yielding in the least.
“Looks very old,” said the middy, “but wear has only made it soft. If it stands all that tugging with the weight of both of us on the end it will bear one of us being dragged through the water, where one isn’t so heavy. Now, then, are we going to try this way?”
“Certainly,” said Aleck.
“Very well; who’s to go first?”
“I will,” said Aleck.
“I don’t know about that,” replied the middy. “You’re only a shore-going fellow, while I’m a sailor. I think I ought to go first.”
“It doesn’t much matter who goes first, but I spoke first and I’ll go.”
“Look here,” cried the middy; “if I give way and let you have first try, will you play fair?”
“Of course. But what do you mean?”
“You won’t brag and chuck it in my face afterwards that you got us out of the hole?”
“Do you think I should be such a donkey?” cried Aleck. “Why, look here, I’m going to try and chance it, but I don’t believe I shall get through. Never mind about who’s to be first. Let’s do all we can to make sure of escaping. Now, then, shall we try now, or wait till the water’s at its lowest? It’s going down now.”
“If we wait till the tide’s at its lowest it will be slack water, and we shall get no help. It’s running out now, and we can see the shape of the arch.”
“Yes, and how rugged and weed-hung it is. I say, I don’t like the look of it. You’d better go first.”
“Very well,” said the middy, promptly, and he began taking off his jacket.
“Hold hard,” cried Aleck, hurriedly stripping off his own. “Come along.”
He led the way to the edge of the water where, though not the nearest, the best leap off seemed to present itself, and then stood perfectly still, gazing down into the softly illuminated water, quivering and wreathing as it ran softly out, and looking dim and blurred through being kept so much in motion by the retiring waves.
“Then you still mean to go?” said the middy.
“Of course. But what shall I do—strip, or try in my clothes?”
“Strip, decidedly,” cried the middy.
“I shall get scratched and scraped going under the rocks.”
“You’ll get caught by them and hung up if you keep your clothes on. Have ’em all off, man; you’ll slip through the water then like a seal.”
“Yes,” said Aleck, calmly, “I suppose it will be best.”
It did not take him long to prepare, and as soon as he was ready his companion made the rope fast just round beneath the arm-pits with a knot that would neither slip nor tighten.
“There!” said the middy, as he finished his preparations by laying out the rope in rings and curves of various shapes, such as would easily run out. “I say, you are perfectly black when I look at you from behind, but in front you seem like a white image on a black ground. Now, then, what do you mean to do?”
“Dive in from here and try to keep right down and swim as deeply as I can for the mouth.”
“Try to swallow the job at one mouthful?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t do,” said the middy, authoritatively. “You couldn’t do it. You must slip in gently here and swim to that rock that’s just out of the water.”
“What! That one that seems just to the left of the arch?”
“That’s the one. Get out on it, wait a few moments, and then take a long, deep breath and dive.”
Aleck pondered for a few moments.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you’re right. I should have had to swim so far first if I started from here.”
“To be sure you would. The less diving you have the better.”
“I see,” said Aleck. “Now, then, let the rope run out easily through your fingers till I give it a sharp jerk. That means pull me back as fast as you can.”
“Yes, because you can go no further.”
“If I pull twice it means I am safe through, and then—”
“I shall tie my end of the rope round my chest and come too. You need not pull, only just draw in the line, unless it stops, because that would mean I had got into difficulties. Do we both understand? I do.”
“So do I,” said Aleck, “so let’s get it over. If I wait much longer I shall be afraid to go.”
“Don’t believe you,” said the middy, bluntly. “Now, then—ready?”
“Yes.”
The word was no sooner uttered than Aleck slipped down into the water and began to swim, with the rope being carefully paid out by his comrade, and in a minute he was fairly started. He was at first invisible, but very soon began to look like a black object making its way over a surface that grew transparent.
Then all at once the rope ceased to run.
“What is it?” cried the middy, anxiously.
“Got to the rock.”
“Is the water deep?”
“Very.”
“Well, get up, ready for your dive.”
“It’s all seaweed, and horribly slippery.”
“Never mind; up with you.”
A peculiar splashing sound arose, and the middy could just make out the dim shape of his companion climbing, or rather dragging, himself on to the slimy rock, whose top was about a foot above the surface of the water.
“Stop a minute or two first,” said the middy, “so as to take—”
He was going to say “breath,” but before the word could be uttered Aleck, who had drawn himself up to stand erect, felt his feet gliding from under him, and it was only by a violent effort that he escaped falling heavily upon the weed-covered rock. As it was he came down with a tremendous splash into the water, going head first in a sharp incline down and down, while, obeying his first impulse, he struck out sharply.
The middy was about to obey his first impulse too, and that was not to pay out, but begin to haul his comrade back. His hands tightened round the line, but as he awoke to the fact that it was gliding through his hands in obedience to the regular pulsation of the movements of a swimmer, he felt that all must be right, and waited while, foot by foot, the rope glided on and the transparent water grew more and more agitated and strange to see.
Once he fancied he could clearly make out Aleck’s steadily swimming figure, but directly after he knew it was a great, waving, flag-like mass of weed fronds, and he uttered an impatient gasp and turned cold.
“He couldn’t have got his breath for the dive,” he said to himself, “and the current must be taking him helplessly away. Half the line must have run out, and perhaps he’s insensible. No; that means swimming, for it goes in jerks, and—he has stopped. He must be through. Hooray! Well done, old—oh, that’s the signal to pull him back!”
It was surely enough, and the middy began at once to haul in, and then the cold feeling became a chill of horror, for he had drawn the rope quite tight at the second haul, and it was perfectly evident that the swimmer had signalled because in some way he was caught fast.
What to do?
The middy was energetic enough, and in those perilous moments, full of horror for his companion’s sake, he hauled till he dared pull no more for fear that the rope should part, and, obeying now a sudden thought, he relaxed the strain, and the rope seemed to be snatched back towards Aleck.
“That can’t be a signal,” he said to himself, in despair; but he began to haul again, recovered the line lost, and to his intense delight he found that the swimmer was once more free, and that he was drawing him rapidly back to where he stood. The lad’s action was as rapid now as he could pass hand over hand, and in a very short space of time he had the poor fellow close up to the rock edge, and then, taking hold of the rope where it passed round Aleck’s chest, he dragged him out, half insensible, upon the rocks.
Another half minute or so might have been fatal, but Aleck had some little energy left, and, after a strangling fit of coughing, he was able to sit up.
“Take—the rope off!” he panted.
This was done, and in a few minutes he was breathing freely and able to talk.
“I didn’t get a fair start,” he said, hoarsely. “I slipped, and went in before I was ready; but I got on all right for a bit till I seemed to be sucked in between two pieces of rock, and felt myself going into black darkness. Then I signalled to you.”
“I hauled directly.”
“Yes, and it seemed to drag me crosswise so that I couldn’t pass through between the two rocks again. How did you manage then?”
“I did nothing, only let go so as to make a fresh start.”
“Did you?” said Aleck, quietly. “Ah, I didn’t know anything about that. I only knew that it was very horrible, and I thought it was all over. It was very near, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the middy, coolly. “You say that you didn’t have a fair start?”
“No; it was that fall. But it’s queer work. You can’t make out where you are going, and the current grinds your head up against the weedy rock.”
“But you got nearly through, didn’t you?”
“I suppose so, but I don’t know. It was all one horrible confusion.”
“Yes; but another few yards, I expect, and you would have been safe, and could have pulled me through, or helped me as I swam.”
“Perhaps,” said Aleck, rather slowly, for he felt confused still. “But what are you doing?”
“Peeling off my clothes.”
“What for?” said Aleck, speaking now with more animation.
“To do my turn, and see how I get on.”
“No, no, no!” cried Aleck, excitedly. “You mustn’t try. It’s too horrible.”
“Horrible? Nonsense. It’s only a swim in the dark. I like diving.”
“I tell you it can’t be done, sailor,” cried Aleck, angrily. “The risk is too great. I should have been drowned if you had not hauled me out.”
“Well, and if I’m going to be drowned you’ll haul me out. You’re strong enough now, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes; but you mustn’t risk it.”
“You wait till I get these things off, my lad, and I’ll show you. Why, you’d have done it splendidly if you had dived off the rock instead of going in flip-flap like a sole out of a basket. I’ll show you how to do it.”
“You’d better take my word for it that it can’t be done. Let’s wait till the tide’s low enough, and then swim out in daylight.”
“You wait till I get out of my uniform,” said the middy, stubbornly, “I’ll show you, my fine fellow. I’ve practised diving a good deal. Some day, if we get to the right place in the ocean, I mean to have a go down with the sponge divers, and if I’m ever in the South Seas I mean to try diving for pearl shell.”
“Well,” said Aleck, rather sadly, “I’ve warned you, and I suppose it is of no use for me to say any more?”
“Not a bit,” said the middy, dragging off his second stocking. “You make fast the dry end of the line round my noble chest. Not too tight, mind, and a knot that won’t slip.”
The young sailor possessed the greater will power now, for Aleck was yet half stunned by what he had gone through. He obeyed every order he received, and carefully knotted on the rope.
“Now, are you ready?” said the middy. “Feel up to hauling me back if I don’t get through?”
“Yes.”
“And, mind, when I am through I shall not drag you. No, no, don’t untie your end of the rope; you’ll want that. Now, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then, as soon as I’m through I shall get on a dry rock and signal to you to come. Then you’ll slip in and swim to the rock again, and take a header off it. Don’t bungle it this time, and when you feel my touch at the rope, mind it’s not meant to haul, only to guide you to where I’m sitting.”
“But what about our clothes?” said Aleck, drearily.
“Bother our clothes! We want to save our skins and not our clothes. Now, then, ready?”
“Yes, if you will go.”
“Will go? Look here!”
The lad sprang, feet foremost, into the water, and rose directly from out of the depths, to strike out, and as Aleck tried hard to follow his movements, he heard him reach the weedy rock, drag himself out, and the rope was gently drawn more and more through his hands as the middy succeeded in getting erect upon the stone, close to its edge.
“See that?” he shouted.
“Yes.”
“That’s what you ought to have done. Now, then, slacken the line well. I’m taking a long, deep breath, ready for you know what. That’s it. Ready—ho!”
The middy sprang into the air, and very dimly Aleck saw that he curved himself over, and the next moment his hands divided the water, and he plunged in for his dive almost without a splash, while as the rope ran swiftly through his hands Aleck felt a flash of energy run through him, and stood ready for any emergency that might befall.
Then a feeling akin to jealousy came over him, as he found the rope drawn out vigorously, and it seemed to him that the midshipman was a far better swimmer and diver than he.
“But he hasn’t come to the difficult part yet,” he thought, the next moment. “He’ll find that he can’t keep down deep, and that while he is trying to beat the tangling wrack to right and left something like a current sucks him upward and forces him against the rocks that form the arch.”
Then, full of eagerness so as to be ready to help the diver when his time of extremity came, Aleck held the rope attached to him with both hands gingerly enough to let it pass easily through as wanted, but at the same time, in the most guarded way, ready to let it fall against his right shoulder when, as he intended, he turned sharply to walk swiftly back into the interior of the cavern and draw his companion back to the water’s edge.
Then a curious thought struck him, consequent upon the rope beginning to run out faster and faster.
“Why, he’s getting through,” he cried, mentally, with a suggestion of disappointment in his brain at his comrade’s better success. “He’s getting through, and he’ll run out all the line quickly now and draw me in.
“Well, so much the better,” he thought. “If he can pass through I can, and perhaps in a few moments we shall both have escaped.
“Wish I’d done something about our clothes,” he muttered then. “We shall want them, of course. But, I know; we can hide somewhere about the mouth of the cave till it gets dark, and then I can take him up to the Den, and—”
Aleck did not finish the plan he was thinking out, for the rope had seemed to him to be running out to a far greater extent than he had taken it himself; but in reality it had gone away at about the same rate, so that something like the same quantity had been drawn through his hands when it suddenly ceased to glide, and directly after a spasm shot through the lad’s brain, for it had stopped, and directly after the signal was given sharply, sending a thrill through him.
He responded directly by clutching the rope tightly and beginning to run.
It was only a beginning, for he was brought up short on the instant, and so sharply that he was jerked backwards.
“Just the same as I must have been,” he said to himself, excitedly, after bearing hard against the rope and finding it quite fast. “It’s like conger fishing,” he thought, “and I must give him line.”
Slackening out at once, he waited for a moment or two, and then tightened again, when to his great delight he found that he was no longer dragging at something set hard, but at a yielding body, which he drew easily to the edge of the pool by means of his long coil, before dropping it and running to seize and repeat the middy’s performance upon himself.
“He’s quite insensible,” he gasped, as he drew the dripping lad right out on to the driest part.
“That I’m not,” panted the middy; “but another minute would have done it.”
He remained silent then, panting hard and struggling to recover his breath, while Aleck untied the line and set his chest at liberty to act as it should.
Then for some minutes nothing was said, the only sound heard being the middy’s hoarse breathing as he laboured hard to recover his regular inspirations.
At last he spoke in an unpleasantly harsh, ill-humoured way.
“Well, aren’t you going to have another try? It’s lovely. Only wants plenty of perseverance.”
“Not I,” replied Aleck. “You don’t seem to have got on so very well.”
“Got on as well as you did,” snarled the middy. “Ugh! It was horrid. Just as if, when I felt that I could hold my breath no longer, I was suddenly seized and sucked into a great sink-hole, only the water was running up instead of down.”
“Yes, that’s just how I felt,” said Aleck.
“You couldn’t have felt so bad as I did,” said the lad, irritably and speaking in the most inconsistent way. “I got my head rasped, too, against the stones overhead, and it’s bleeding fast. Look at it, will you?”
Aleck examined the place, after opening the door of the lanthorn.
“It isn’t bleeding,” he said.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” cried the middy, irritably. “It smarts horribly, and I can feel the blood trickling down the back of my neck.”
“That’s water out of your hair.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, certain. I can’t even see a mark on your head.”
“Well, there ought to be,” grumbled the lad. “Aren’t you going to have another try?”
“No. Are you?”
“Not if I know it,” replied the middy. “Once is quite enough for a trip of that kind.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to get out by swimming.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like it; but the smugglers get in.”
“Yes, at certain times.”
“Then this is an uncertain time, I suppose!” said the middy, beginning to dress.
“Hadn’t we better get round and have a good rub with a bit of sail?” asked Aleck.
“No; we can’t carry our clothes without getting them wet, and if we don’t take them it means coming all the way round here again. Let’s dress as we are; the salt water will soon dry.”
“Very well,” said Aleck, and he followed his companion’s example with much satisfaction to his feelings, listening the while to the middy’s plaints and grumblings, for he had been under water long enough to make him feel something like resuscitated people, exceedingly discontented and ill-humoured.
Every now and then he burst out with some disagreeable remark. One minute it was against his shirt for sticking to his wet back; another time it was at Aleck for getting on so fast with his dressing consequent upon his being drier; and then he began to abuse Eben Megg.
“A beast; that’s what he is. It’s just as bad as murdering us with a knife or chopper, that it is.”
They were dressed at something like the same time, Aleck having achieved his task quietly, the middy with a sort of accompaniment of grumbles and unpleasant remarks.
“There,” he said, at last; “that seems to have done me a lot of good. There’s nothing like a good growl.”
“Got rid of a lot of ill temper, eh?” said Aleck, smiling to himself.
“Yes, I suppose that’s it. But, I say, we’re not going to try that way out again! I say it’s perfectly impossible.”
“So do I,” said Aleck.
“We should both have been drowned if it hadn’t been for the rope.”
“That we should, for a certainty,” replied Aleck. “Well, there’s nothing to be done but to wait patiently for the coming of that low tide when a boat could come in, as Eben Megg said, and as it’s plain it does, or else all these stores couldn’t have been brought in.”
“And when it does come?” said the middy.
“We shall swim or wade out, of course,” said Aleck.
“No, we shan’t,” grumbled the middy. “You see if it doesn’t come in the night, when we’re asleep.”
“We must be too much on the look-out for that,” said Aleck.
“It will not come all at once, but by degrees—lower and lower tides, till we get the one we want; and till then we shall have to be patient.”
“Hark at him!” said the midshipman. “Who’s to be patient at a time like this? Well, I’m beginning to feel warm and dry again; what do you say to getting back and having dinner, or whatever you like to call it? Oh, dear! Eating and drinking’s bad enough on ship board, but it’s all feasts and banquets compared to this.”
“We must try to improve it,” said Aleck. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to catch fish.”
“What? You don’t suppose fish would be such scaly idiots as to come into a hole like this?”
“Perhaps not, but I believe they’d be shelly idiots enough. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised, if we had a lobster or crab pot thrown out here, if we caught some fine ones.”
“Set one, then,” said the midshipman, sourly. “Perhaps there is one.”
“Not likely,” replied Aleck. “Never mind, let’s make the best of what we’ve got and be thankful.”
“No, that I won’t,” cried his companion. “I’ll make the best of what we’ve got as much as you like, but I must draw the line somewhere—I won’t be thankful.”
“I will,” said Aleck, good-temperedly; “thankful enough for both.”
“Come on,” said the midshipman, gruffly.
“Wait a moment till I’ve coiled up the line loosely. We may want it, and it must be hung up to dry.”
This was done, and then after noting that the water was growing deeper in the direction of the sea entrance, the pair made their way right round by the head, stopped at the spring to have a hearty drink, and then pressed on, lanthorn in hand, to their resting-place, where, thoroughly upset by his adventure, the midshipman grumbled at everything till Aleck burst into a hearty laugh.
“Hallo!” cried his companion, eagerly; “let’s have it. Got a bright idea as to how to get out?”
“No,” said Aleck, “I was laughing at the comic way in which you keep on finding fault.”
“Humph! Well, I have been going it rather, haven’t I?”
“Doing nothing else but growl.”
“That’s the worst of having a nasty temper. Don’t do a bit of good either, does it?”
“Not a bit,” said Aleck. “Makes things still worse.”
“Think so?”
Aleck nodded.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ll drop it then. Now, then, what do you say to having a good long snooze?”
“I’m willing,” said Aleck, “for I’m thoroughly tired out.”
“Put out the light then. My word, what a good thing sleep is!” said the midshipman, after they had lain in silence for a few minutes. “Makes you able to forget all your troubles.”
There was a pause, and then the midshipman began:
“I say it makes you able to forget all your troubles, doesn’t it?”
Still silence.
“Don’t you hear what I say?”
No answer.
“Hanged if he isn’t asleep! How a fellow can be such a dormouse-headed animal at a time like this I don’t know.”
He ought to have known, a minute later, for he was lying upon his back, fast asleep and breathing hard, dreaming of all kinds of pleasant things, some of which had to do with being feasted after getting free.
Chapter Twenty Nine.The next day the two lads could only think of their attempt with a shudder, for their efforts, though they did not quite grasp the narrowness of their escape from death, had resulted in a peculiar shock to their system, one effect of which was to make then disinclined to do anything more than sit and lie in the darkness watching the faint suggestion of dawn in the direction of the submerged archway. Then, too, they slept a good deal, while even on the following day they both suffered a good deal from want of energy.Towards evening, though, Aleck roused up.“Look here, sailor,” he said, “this will not do. We ought to be doing something.”“What?” said the middy, sadly. “Try again to drown ourselves?”“Oh, no; that was a bit of madness. We mustn’t try that again.”“What then? It seems to me that we may as well keep going to sleep till we don’t wake again.”“What!” shouted Aleck, his companion’s words fully rousing him from his lethargic state. “Well, of all the cowardly things for a fellow to say!”“Cowardly!” cried the middy, literally galvanised into action by the sound of that word. “You want to quarrel, then, do you? You want to fight, eh? Very well, I’m your man. Let’s light the lanthorn and have it out at once.”“Oh, very well,” cried Aleck. “There’s a nice soft bit of sand yonder that will just do.”The middy snorted like an angry animal and began to breathe hard, while Aleck, feeling regularly angry now, felt for the tinder-box and matches, and began to send the sparks flying in showers.The tinder was soon glowing, the match well alight, and a fresh candle stuck in its place, the lanthorn being set upon a flat stone, with the door open, after which the two lads slipped off their jackets and rolled up their sleeves.“Shut the lanthorn door, stupid,” cried the middy.“What for?”“What for? To keep the candle from tumbling out the first time I knock you up against that stone.”“I should like to catch you at it,” said Aleck. “If I shut the door how am I to see to hit you on the nose?”“You hit me on the nose? Ha, ha!” cried the middy. “Why, I shall have you calling out that you’ve had enough long before you get there.”“We shall see,” said Aleck. “Don’t you think that you’re going to frighten me with a lot of bounce. Now, then, are you ready?”“Yes, I’m ready enough. I’ll show you whether I’m a coward or not. Here, hold out your hand.”“What for?”“To shake hands, of course, and show that we mean fair play.”“I never stopped for that when I had a fight with the Rockabie boys, but there you are.”Hands were grasped, and the midshipman was about to withdraw his, but it was held tightly, and somehow or another his own fingers began to respond in a tight clench.And thus they stood for quite a minute, while some subtle fluid like common-sense in a gaseous form seemed to run up their arms through their shoulders, and then divide, for part to feed their brains and the other part to make their hearts beat more calmly.At last Aleck spoke.“I say,” he said, “aren’t we going to make fools of ourselves?”“I don’t know,” was the reply, “but I’ll show you I’m not a coward.”“I never thought you were a coward, but you’d say I was one if I told you that I didn’t want to fight.”“No, I shouldn’t,” said the middy, “because I can’t help feeling that it is stupid, and I don’t want to fight either.”“Then, why should we fight?”“Oh,” said the middy, “there are times when a gentleman’s bound to stand upon his honour. We ought to fight now with pistols; but as we have none why, of course, it has to be fists. Besides, I don’t suppose you could use a pistol, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to shoot you.”“I daresay I know as much about pistols as you do,” said Aleck. “I’ve shot at a mark with my uncle. But we needn’t argue about that.”“No, we’ve got our fists, so let’s get it done.”But they did not begin, for the idea that they really were about to make fools of themselves grew stronger, and as they dropped their hands to raise them again as fists, neither liked to strike the first blow.Suddenly an idea struck Aleck as he glanced sidewise to see their shadows stretched out in a horribly grotesque, distorted form upon the dark water, and he smiled to himself as he saw his fists elongated into clubs, while he said, suddenly:“I say, I don’t want, you to think me a coward.”“Very well, then, you had better show you are not by fighting hard to keep me from giving you an awful licking.”“You can’t do it,” said Aleck; “butIsay I don’t want to fight.”“Perhaps not; but you’ll soon find you’ll have to, or I shall call you the greatest coward I ever saw.”“But it seems so stupid when we are in such trouble to make things worse by knocking one another about.”“Well, yes, perhaps it does,” replied the middy.“Suppose, then, I do something brave than fighting you,” said Aleck.“What could you do?”“Put the rope round me again and try to swim out. That would be doing some good.”“You daren’t do it?”“Yes, I dare,” cried Aleck, “and I will if you’ll say that it’s as brave as fighting you.”“I don’t know whether it’s as brave,” said the middy, “but I’d sooner fight than try the other. Ugh! I wouldn’t try that again for anything.”“Very well, then, I will,” said Aleck, stoutly. “You must own now that it’s a braver thing to do than to begin trying to knock you about. There, put down your hands, I’m not going to fight.”“You’re beaten then.”“Not a bit of it. I’m going to show you that I’m not a coward.”“No, you’re not,” said the middy, after a few minutes’ pause, during which Aleck ran to the rock and brought back the now dry rope in its loose coil.To his surprise the middy took a step forward and caught hold of it tightly to try and jerk it away.“What are you going to do?” said Aleck, in wonder.“Put it back,” said the middy.“Why?”“Because you’re trying to make me seem a coward now.”“I don’t understand you.”“Do you think I’m going to be such a coward as to let you do what I’m afraid to do myself?”“Then you would be afraid to go again?”“Yes, of course I should be. So would you.”“Yes, I can’t help feeling horribly afraid; but I’ll do it,” said Aleck.“To show you’re not a coward?”“Partly that, and partly because I fancy that perhaps I could swim out this time.”“And I’m sure you couldn’t,” said the middy, “and I shan’t let you go.”“You can’t stop me?”“Yes, I can; I won’t hold the rope.”“Then I’ll go without.”“Why, there’ll be no one to pull you back if you get stuck.”“I don’t care; I’ll go all the same.”“Then you are a coward,” cried the middy, triumphantly.“Mind what you’re about,” said Aleck, hotly. “Don’t you say that again.”“Yes, I will. You’re a coward, for you’re going to try and swim out, and leave your comrade, who daren’t do it, alone here to die.”“Didn’t think of that,” said Aleck. “There, I won’t try to go now; so don’t be frightened.”“What!”Aleck burst out laughing.“I say,” he cried, “what tempers we have both got into! Let’s go and do something sensible to try and work it off.”“But there’s nothing we can do,” said the middy, despondently.“Yes, there is. As the lanthorn’s alight, let’s go and have a try at the zigzag.”The middy followed his companion without a word, and they both climbed up wearily and hopelessly to have another desperate try to dislodge the stones, but only to prove that it was an impossible task.Literally wearied out, they descended, after being compelled to desist by the candle gradually failing, while it had gone right out in the socket before they reached the cave.But their utter despondency was a little checked by the sight of the soft pale light which seemed to rise from the water more clearly than ever before; and Aleck said so, but the middy was of the opposite opinion.“No,” he said. “It only seems so after the horrible darkness of that hole.”“I don’t know,” said Aleck; “it certainly looks brighter to me. See how clear the arch looks with the seaweed waving about! I say, sailor, I’ve a great mind to have another try.”“No, you haven’t,” growled the middy, wearily. “I can’t spare you. I’m not going to stop here and die all alone.”“You wouldn’t, for I should drag you out after me.”“Couldn’t do it after you were drowned.”“I shouldn’t be drowned,” said Aleck, slowly and thoughtfully.“Be quiet—don’t bother—I’m so tired—regularly beat out after all that trying up yonder; and so are you. I say, Aleck, I’m beginning to be afraid that we shall never see the sunshine again.”Aleck said nothing, but lay gazing sadly at the dimly-seen arch in the water, and followed the waving to and fro of the great fronds of sea-wrack, till he shuddered once or twice and seemed to feel them clinging round his head and neck, making it dark, but somehow without causing the horrible, strangling, helpless sensation he had suffered from before. In fact, it seemed to be pleasant and restful, and by degrees produced a sensation of coolness that was most welcome after the stifling heat at the top of the zigzag, which had been made worse by the odour of the burning candle.Then Aleck ceased to think, but lay in the cool, soft darkness, till all at once he started up sitting and wondering.“Why, I’ve been asleep,” he said to himself. “Here, sailor.”“Yes; what was that?”“I don’t know. I seemed to hear something.”“Have you been asleep?”“Yes; have you?”“I think so,” said the middy. “We must have been. But, I say, it really is much lighter this time.”“So I thought,” said Aleck. “And, I say, I can smell the fresh seaweed. Is the arch going to be open at last?”Phee-ew! came a low, plaintive whistle.“Hear that?” cried Aleck, wildly.“Yes, I heard it in my sleep. The place is getting open then. There it goes again. It must be a gull.”“No, no, no!” cried Aleck, wildly, his voice sounding cracked and broken from the overpowering joy that seemed to choke him. “Don’t you know what it is?”“A seagull, I tell you.”“No, no, no! It’s Tom Bodger’s whistle. You listen now.”There was a dead silence in the cavern, save that both lads felt or heard the throbbing in their breasts.“I can’t hear anything,” said the middy, at last. “What was it?”“Nothing,” gasped Aleck. “I can’t—can’t whistle now.”But he made another effort to control his quivering tips, mastered them into a state of rigidity, and produced a repetition of the same low, plaintive note that had reached their ears.Directly after, the whistle was repeated from outside, and, as Aleck produced it once more in trembling tones, the lads leaped to their feet, for, coming as it were right along the surface of the water, as if through some invisible opening, there came the welcome sound:“Ship ahoy! Master Aleck—a—”suck—suck—flop—flop—a whisper, and then something like a sigh.“It is Tom Bodger!” cried Aleck, in a voice he did not know for his own, and something seemed to clutch him about the throat, and he knelt there muttering something inaudible to himself.
The next day the two lads could only think of their attempt with a shudder, for their efforts, though they did not quite grasp the narrowness of their escape from death, had resulted in a peculiar shock to their system, one effect of which was to make then disinclined to do anything more than sit and lie in the darkness watching the faint suggestion of dawn in the direction of the submerged archway. Then, too, they slept a good deal, while even on the following day they both suffered a good deal from want of energy.
Towards evening, though, Aleck roused up.
“Look here, sailor,” he said, “this will not do. We ought to be doing something.”
“What?” said the middy, sadly. “Try again to drown ourselves?”
“Oh, no; that was a bit of madness. We mustn’t try that again.”
“What then? It seems to me that we may as well keep going to sleep till we don’t wake again.”
“What!” shouted Aleck, his companion’s words fully rousing him from his lethargic state. “Well, of all the cowardly things for a fellow to say!”
“Cowardly!” cried the middy, literally galvanised into action by the sound of that word. “You want to quarrel, then, do you? You want to fight, eh? Very well, I’m your man. Let’s light the lanthorn and have it out at once.”
“Oh, very well,” cried Aleck. “There’s a nice soft bit of sand yonder that will just do.”
The middy snorted like an angry animal and began to breathe hard, while Aleck, feeling regularly angry now, felt for the tinder-box and matches, and began to send the sparks flying in showers.
The tinder was soon glowing, the match well alight, and a fresh candle stuck in its place, the lanthorn being set upon a flat stone, with the door open, after which the two lads slipped off their jackets and rolled up their sleeves.
“Shut the lanthorn door, stupid,” cried the middy.
“What for?”
“What for? To keep the candle from tumbling out the first time I knock you up against that stone.”
“I should like to catch you at it,” said Aleck. “If I shut the door how am I to see to hit you on the nose?”
“You hit me on the nose? Ha, ha!” cried the middy. “Why, I shall have you calling out that you’ve had enough long before you get there.”
“We shall see,” said Aleck. “Don’t you think that you’re going to frighten me with a lot of bounce. Now, then, are you ready?”
“Yes, I’m ready enough. I’ll show you whether I’m a coward or not. Here, hold out your hand.”
“What for?”
“To shake hands, of course, and show that we mean fair play.”
“I never stopped for that when I had a fight with the Rockabie boys, but there you are.”
Hands were grasped, and the midshipman was about to withdraw his, but it was held tightly, and somehow or another his own fingers began to respond in a tight clench.
And thus they stood for quite a minute, while some subtle fluid like common-sense in a gaseous form seemed to run up their arms through their shoulders, and then divide, for part to feed their brains and the other part to make their hearts beat more calmly.
At last Aleck spoke.
“I say,” he said, “aren’t we going to make fools of ourselves?”
“I don’t know,” was the reply, “but I’ll show you I’m not a coward.”
“I never thought you were a coward, but you’d say I was one if I told you that I didn’t want to fight.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said the middy, “because I can’t help feeling that it is stupid, and I don’t want to fight either.”
“Then, why should we fight?”
“Oh,” said the middy, “there are times when a gentleman’s bound to stand upon his honour. We ought to fight now with pistols; but as we have none why, of course, it has to be fists. Besides, I don’t suppose you could use a pistol, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to shoot you.”
“I daresay I know as much about pistols as you do,” said Aleck. “I’ve shot at a mark with my uncle. But we needn’t argue about that.”
“No, we’ve got our fists, so let’s get it done.”
But they did not begin, for the idea that they really were about to make fools of themselves grew stronger, and as they dropped their hands to raise them again as fists, neither liked to strike the first blow.
Suddenly an idea struck Aleck as he glanced sidewise to see their shadows stretched out in a horribly grotesque, distorted form upon the dark water, and he smiled to himself as he saw his fists elongated into clubs, while he said, suddenly:
“I say, I don’t want, you to think me a coward.”
“Very well, then, you had better show you are not by fighting hard to keep me from giving you an awful licking.”
“You can’t do it,” said Aleck; “butIsay I don’t want to fight.”
“Perhaps not; but you’ll soon find you’ll have to, or I shall call you the greatest coward I ever saw.”
“But it seems so stupid when we are in such trouble to make things worse by knocking one another about.”
“Well, yes, perhaps it does,” replied the middy.
“Suppose, then, I do something brave than fighting you,” said Aleck.
“What could you do?”
“Put the rope round me again and try to swim out. That would be doing some good.”
“You daren’t do it?”
“Yes, I dare,” cried Aleck, “and I will if you’ll say that it’s as brave as fighting you.”
“I don’t know whether it’s as brave,” said the middy, “but I’d sooner fight than try the other. Ugh! I wouldn’t try that again for anything.”
“Very well, then, I will,” said Aleck, stoutly. “You must own now that it’s a braver thing to do than to begin trying to knock you about. There, put down your hands, I’m not going to fight.”
“You’re beaten then.”
“Not a bit of it. I’m going to show you that I’m not a coward.”
“No, you’re not,” said the middy, after a few minutes’ pause, during which Aleck ran to the rock and brought back the now dry rope in its loose coil.
To his surprise the middy took a step forward and caught hold of it tightly to try and jerk it away.
“What are you going to do?” said Aleck, in wonder.
“Put it back,” said the middy.
“Why?”
“Because you’re trying to make me seem a coward now.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Do you think I’m going to be such a coward as to let you do what I’m afraid to do myself?”
“Then you would be afraid to go again?”
“Yes, of course I should be. So would you.”
“Yes, I can’t help feeling horribly afraid; but I’ll do it,” said Aleck.
“To show you’re not a coward?”
“Partly that, and partly because I fancy that perhaps I could swim out this time.”
“And I’m sure you couldn’t,” said the middy, “and I shan’t let you go.”
“You can’t stop me?”
“Yes, I can; I won’t hold the rope.”
“Then I’ll go without.”
“Why, there’ll be no one to pull you back if you get stuck.”
“I don’t care; I’ll go all the same.”
“Then you are a coward,” cried the middy, triumphantly.
“Mind what you’re about,” said Aleck, hotly. “Don’t you say that again.”
“Yes, I will. You’re a coward, for you’re going to try and swim out, and leave your comrade, who daren’t do it, alone here to die.”
“Didn’t think of that,” said Aleck. “There, I won’t try to go now; so don’t be frightened.”
“What!”
Aleck burst out laughing.
“I say,” he cried, “what tempers we have both got into! Let’s go and do something sensible to try and work it off.”
“But there’s nothing we can do,” said the middy, despondently.
“Yes, there is. As the lanthorn’s alight, let’s go and have a try at the zigzag.”
The middy followed his companion without a word, and they both climbed up wearily and hopelessly to have another desperate try to dislodge the stones, but only to prove that it was an impossible task.
Literally wearied out, they descended, after being compelled to desist by the candle gradually failing, while it had gone right out in the socket before they reached the cave.
But their utter despondency was a little checked by the sight of the soft pale light which seemed to rise from the water more clearly than ever before; and Aleck said so, but the middy was of the opposite opinion.
“No,” he said. “It only seems so after the horrible darkness of that hole.”
“I don’t know,” said Aleck; “it certainly looks brighter to me. See how clear the arch looks with the seaweed waving about! I say, sailor, I’ve a great mind to have another try.”
“No, you haven’t,” growled the middy, wearily. “I can’t spare you. I’m not going to stop here and die all alone.”
“You wouldn’t, for I should drag you out after me.”
“Couldn’t do it after you were drowned.”
“I shouldn’t be drowned,” said Aleck, slowly and thoughtfully.
“Be quiet—don’t bother—I’m so tired—regularly beat out after all that trying up yonder; and so are you. I say, Aleck, I’m beginning to be afraid that we shall never see the sunshine again.”
Aleck said nothing, but lay gazing sadly at the dimly-seen arch in the water, and followed the waving to and fro of the great fronds of sea-wrack, till he shuddered once or twice and seemed to feel them clinging round his head and neck, making it dark, but somehow without causing the horrible, strangling, helpless sensation he had suffered from before. In fact, it seemed to be pleasant and restful, and by degrees produced a sensation of coolness that was most welcome after the stifling heat at the top of the zigzag, which had been made worse by the odour of the burning candle.
Then Aleck ceased to think, but lay in the cool, soft darkness, till all at once he started up sitting and wondering.
“Why, I’ve been asleep,” he said to himself. “Here, sailor.”
“Yes; what was that?”
“I don’t know. I seemed to hear something.”
“Have you been asleep?”
“Yes; have you?”
“I think so,” said the middy. “We must have been. But, I say, it really is much lighter this time.”
“So I thought,” said Aleck. “And, I say, I can smell the fresh seaweed. Is the arch going to be open at last?”
Phee-ew! came a low, plaintive whistle.
“Hear that?” cried Aleck, wildly.
“Yes, I heard it in my sleep. The place is getting open then. There it goes again. It must be a gull.”
“No, no, no!” cried Aleck, wildly, his voice sounding cracked and broken from the overpowering joy that seemed to choke him. “Don’t you know what it is?”
“A seagull, I tell you.”
“No, no, no! It’s Tom Bodger’s whistle. You listen now.”
There was a dead silence in the cavern, save that both lads felt or heard the throbbing in their breasts.
“I can’t hear anything,” said the middy, at last. “What was it?”
“Nothing,” gasped Aleck. “I can’t—can’t whistle now.”
But he made another effort to control his quivering tips, mastered them into a state of rigidity, and produced a repetition of the same low, plaintive note that had reached their ears.
Directly after, the whistle was repeated from outside, and, as Aleck produced it once more in trembling tones, the lads leaped to their feet, for, coming as it were right along the surface of the water, as if through some invisible opening, there came the welcome sound:
“Ship ahoy! Master Aleck—a—”suck—suck—flop—flop—a whisper, and then something like a sigh.
“It is Tom Bodger!” cried Aleck, in a voice he did not know for his own, and something seemed to clutch him about the throat, and he knelt there muttering something inaudible to himself.
Chapter Thirty.Phee-ew! Phee-ew! The peculiar gull-like whistle once more, to run in a softened series of echoes right up into the farthest part of the cavern. Then there came the peculiar sucking, ploshing sound as of water filling up an opening. A minute later “Ship ahoy!” from outside.“Tom! Ahoy!” yelled Aleck, wildly.“Ahoy, my lad! Ahoy!” and something else was cut off by the soft sucking splash of water again, while to make the lads’ position more painful in their efforts to reply, twice over they were conscious of the fact that when they replied with a shout their cries did not pass through the orifice, which the water had closed.But the tide was ebbing steadily, and the tiny arc of the rocks which showed the way in was growing more open, so that at the end of a few minutes they heard plainly:“Where’bouts are yer, my lad?”“In here!” shouted Aleck, but only in face of a dullplosh.Another minute and the question was repeated, but from whence the lads could hardly tell, for instead of coming from the cavern mouth the words seemed to come from far up the cavern, to be followed by another splash. It was quite half a minute before, taught by experience, Aleck shouted:“Shut in here! Cave!”There was another plosh, but they had proof soon after that the words had been heard, for the hail now came:“Are yer ’live, my lad?”“Ye-es,” cried Aleck. “Quite!” and then he could in his excitement hardly control a hysterical laugh at the absurdity of the question and answer.“Thought yer was dead and gone, my lad,” came now, in company with a fainter splashing.“Tom Bodger!”“Hullo!” came quickly.“We’re shut in by the water.”“Who’s ‘we’?”“The cutter’s midshipman and I.”“Wha–a–at! Then there arn’t nayther on yer dead and drownded, my lad?”“No–o–o–o!”“Then I say hooray! hooray! But can’t you swim out?”“No. We’ve tried.”“Ho!” came back. “Wait a bit.”“What for? Can’t you get help for us, Tom?”“Ay, ay, my lad,” came back. “But jest you wait.”Then there was silence, and the prisoners joined hands, to kneel, waiting and listening.“He has gone for help,” said the middy.“Yes, and before he gets back that little hole that let his words in will be shut up again.”“Never mind,” said the middy, sagely; “he knows we’re here.”“Oh, but why didn’t I think to tell him of the zigzag path? I daresay they could get the stones out from above where they were pushed in.”“Perhaps he hasn’t gone,” said the middy. “Ahoy there!”There was a peculiar sound as of the water rising up and gurgling along a channel, while a lapping sound at their feet told that the water inside was being put in motion.“Why, he has dived down,” cried Aleck, suddenly, “so as to try and get to us.”“Tchah! Nonsense. That squat little wooden-legged man couldn’t swim.”But at the end of what seemed to be a long period they heard a louder splash, followed by another, and the illuminated water began to dance and a curious ebullition to be faintly seen.Then there was a panting sigh, and a familiar voice cried:“Where’bouts are yer?”“Here, here!” cried the lads, in a breath, and the next minute they were conscious of something swimming towards them, which took shape more and more till they saw that it was a man swimming on his back.“What cheer-ho!” came now, in the midst of a lot of splashing. “Lend us a hand, my lads, for I’m all at sea here. Thanky! Steady! Let’s get soundings for my legs. Mind bringing that lanthorn a bit forrarder? That’s right; now I can see where I go.”Tom Bodger had managed to find a hold for his stumps, and stood shaking himself as well as he could for the fact that he had a lad holding tightly on to each hand.“Well, yer don’t feel like ghostses, my lads!” cried the sailor. “This here’s solid flesh and bone, and it’s rayther disappynting like.”“Disappointing, Tom?”“Yes, Master Aleck. Yer see, your uncle says: ‘You find the poor lad’s remains, Bodger,’—remains, that’s what he called it—‘and I’ll give yer a ten-pound Bank o’ Hengland note,’ he says.”“Oh!” cried Aleck, passionately.“And the orficer there from the Revenoo cutter, he says: ‘You find the body o’ young Mr Wrighton of the man-o’-war sloop, and there’ll be the same reward for that.’”“Humph! I should have thought I was worth more than that,” said the midshipman.“Ay, ay, sir!” cried Tom Bodger, who was squeezing his shirt and breeches as he talked. “So says I, sir; but it’s disappynting, for I arn’t found no corpses, on’y you young gents all as live-ho as fish; and what’s to come o’ my rewards?”“Oh, bother the rewards, Tom! How did you get in?”“Dove, sir, and swimmed on my back with my flippers going like one o’ the seals I’ve seen come in here.”“But we tried to do that, both of us, and we couldn’t do it.”“Dessay not, sir. Didn’t try on the right tide.”“Nearly got drowned, both of us, my lad,” said the midshipman. “But don’t let’s lose time. You show the way, and we’ll follow you.”“No hurry, sir; plenty o’ time. Be easier bimeby. Tide’s got another hour o’ ebb yet. But how in the name o’ oakum did you two gents manage to get in here? I knowed there was a hole here where the seals dove in, and I did mean to come sploring like at some time or other; but it’s on’y once in a way as you can row in.”Aleck told him in a few words, and the man whistled.“Well, I’ll be blessed!” he said. “I allus knowed that Eben Megg and his mates must have a store hole somewhere, and p’raps if I’d ha’ lay out to sarch for it I might ha’ found it out. But I didn’t want to go spying about and get a crack o’ the head for my pains. The Revenoo lads’ll find out for theirselves some day; and so you young gents have been the first?”“Stop a minute,” said Aleck. “What about Eben Megg?”“Oh, they cotched him days ago, sir—cutter’s men dropped upon him while they was hunting for this young gent’s corpus, and he’s aboard your ship, sir, I expect, along with the other pressed men.”“But haven’t they been looking for me any more?” said the middy.“No, sir; they give it up arter they’d caught Eben; and, as I telled yer, there was a reward offered for to find yer dead as they couldn’t find yer living.”“So that’s why Eben didn’t come back, sailor,” said Aleck, quietly.“Yes,” said the middy, “but why didn’t he tell the cutter’s officer that we were shut up here?”“Too bitter about his capture, perhaps, or he might not have had a chance to speak while he was ashore.”“I don’t believe it was that,” said the middy. “I believe he wouldn’t tell where their storehouse was.”“And so this here’s the smugglers’ cave, is it?” said Tom Bodger, looking about. “But where’s t’other way out, sir?”Aleck explained that the smuggler had closed the way up.“Well, sir, it’s a wery artful sort o’ place, I will say that. Lot o’ good things stored up here, I s’pose?”“Plenty.”“Hah! Is there now? Well, it means some prize money, Mr Wrighton, sir, and enough to get a big share.”“And I deserve it, my man,” said the middy, with something of his old consequential way; “but let’s get out into the daylight. I’m afraid—I’m—that is, I shouldn’t like to be shut in again.”“No fear, sir. You trust me. Lot more time yet. ’Sides, the tide’ll fall lower to-morrow morning; but I’ll get you out as soon as I can, for your poor uncle’s quite took to his bed, Master Aleck.”“Uncle has?”“Yes, sir. Chuffy sharp-spoken gent as he always was, blest if he didn’t say quite soft to me, with the big tears a-standing in his eyes: ‘It’s all over, Bodger, my man,’ he says, ‘and you may have the poor boy’s boat, for I know if he could speak now he would say, “Give it to poor old Tom.”’”“Poor old uncle!” said Aleck, huskily. “Then you’re cheated again, Tom, and have lost your boat?”“And hearty glad on it, too, Master Aleck, say I. A-mussy me, my lad, what would the Den ha’ been without you there? The captain wouldn’t ha’ wanted me. I don’t wonder as I couldn’t rest, but come over here every morning and stayed till dark, climbing about the rocks and cliffs, with the birds a-shouting at me and thinking all the time that I’d come arter their young ’uns—bubblins, as we calls ’em, ’cause they’re so fat.”“And so they haven’t been looking for me any more?” said the middy, in a disappointed tone.“No, sir; not since they telled me to keep on looking for yer. You see, everybody said as you must ha’ gone overboard and been washed out to sea, same as the captain felt that you’d slipped off the cliff somewhere, Master Aleck, and been drowned. But I kep’ on thinking as both on yer might ha’ been washed into some crivissy place and stuck there, and that’s why I kep’ on peeking and peering about, hoping I might come upon one of you if I didn’t find both; and sure enough, here you are. I don’t know what you gents think on it, but I call it a right-down good morning’s work for such a man as me.”“But you did not walk over from Rockabie this morning, my man?” said the middy.“Not walk over, sir? Oh, yes, I did.”“You must be very tired?”“Not me, sir. My legs never get tired; and yet the queerest thing about it is that they allus feel stiff.”“Don’t talk any more, Tom,” said Aleck. “I want to get to business. Now, then, don’t you think we might get out now?”“Well, yes, sir; p’raps we might. It’s a good deal lighter, you see, since I come, but she’s far from low water yet, and it’ll come much easier when tide’s right down. But can’t I have a bit of a look round, Master Aleck?”“Of course,” was the reply, and the sailor grinned and chuckled as he ran his eyes over what he looked upon as a regular treasure house for anyone whose dealings were on the sea with boats.The cavern was lighter now than the two prisoners had ever seen it, so that Tom was able to have a good look; and he finished off by trotting down as near to the mouth of the great place as he could, and then turning to Aleck.“There,” he said, “I think we might venture out now. You can swim out now without having to dive. What do you say, Mr Wrighton, sir?”“I think we ought to go at once.”“Come on, then, gen’lemen. You’ll get a bit wet, but there’s a long climb arterwards up the hot rocks in the sunshine, and you’ll be ’most dry ’fore you get home.”“Oh, never mind the water,” cried the middy. “My uniform’s spoilt. I’m ready to do anything to get out of here.”“Will you go first, sir?” cried Tom Bodger.“No, you found the way in,” was the reply, “so lead the way out.”“Right, sir. Ready?”“Then come on.”The man took three or four of his queer steps, to stand for a moment on the edge of the deep pool, and then went in sidewise to swim like a seal for the low archway, whose weed-hung edges were only a few inches above the surface of the water, and as he reached it to pass under he laid his head sidewise so that the dripping shell-covered weed wiped his cheek.There had been no hesitation on the part of the prisoners. Aleck sprang in as soon as their guide was a few feet away, and the middy followed, both finding their task delightfully easy as they swam some fifty yards through a low tunnel, whose roof was for the most part so close to the surface that more than once, as the smooth water heaved, Aleck’s face just touched the impending smoothly-worn stone.But there were two places, only a few yards in, where the arch was broken into a yawning crack, from which the water dripped in a heavy shower.“Look up as you come along here,” cried Aleck to his companion, and then he shuddered, for his voice raised a peculiar echo, suggesting weird hollows and tunnels, while as he increased his strokes to get past and the middy came under in turn, he shouted again after his leader:“Why, Tom, that must be where the water snatched us up and nearly drowned us.”Five minutes later all three were swimming for a rough natural pier, and Tom Bodger gave his head a sidewise wag towards another low cavernous arch.“’Nother way in there,” he said. “Jynes the one we came out of. You must have seen how the waves dance and splash there in rough weather, Master Aleck?”“No,” was the reply. “I’ve only seen that it’s a terribly rough bit of coast. I never came down here, and of course I was never out in my boat when it was rough.”“Course not, sir. It is a coarse bit. I had no end of a job to get down, and I spect that it’s going to be a bit worse going up agen. What do you say to sitting up yonder in the sunshine on that there shelf? The birds’ll soon go. You can make yourselves comf’able and get dry while I go up and get a rope. Dessay I can be back in an hour or so.”“No,” cried the lads, in a breath. “We’ll climb it if you can.”Climb up the dangerous cliff they did by helping one another, and with several halts to look down at the still falling tide; and in one of these intervals Aleck exclaimed:“But I still can’t see how the smugglers could run a boat up and row into that cavern.”“Course they couldn’t row, sir,” replied Tom, “on’y shove her in. But don’t you see what a beautiful deep cut there is? Bound to say that at the right time they’d run a big lugger close in. Look yonder! It’s just like the way into a dock, and sheltered lovely. Ah, they’re an artful lot, smugglers! You never know what they’re after.”It was about an hour later that, without passing a soul on their solitary way, the party reached the cliff path down into the Den garden, where no Dunning was visible, and a chill came over Aleck like a warning of something fresh in the way of disaster that he was to encounter.It came suddenly, but it was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that someone was at the house.“Wait here,” he whispered to his companions. “Let me go and see my uncle first.”He crept in unheard, glanced round to see that the lower room was empty, and then went softly up the stairs, his well-soaked boots making as little noise as if they had been of indiarubber.The study door yielded to a touch, and he stood gazing at the figure of his uncle, seated in his usual place, but with pen, ink and papers thrust aside so that he could bow his grey head down upon his clasped hands.“Asleep, uncle?” said the lad, softly.“Aleck, my boy!” cried the old man, springing up to catch the lost one in his arms. “Heaven be thanked! I was mourning for you as dead.”
Phee-ew! Phee-ew! The peculiar gull-like whistle once more, to run in a softened series of echoes right up into the farthest part of the cavern. Then there came the peculiar sucking, ploshing sound as of water filling up an opening. A minute later “Ship ahoy!” from outside.
“Tom! Ahoy!” yelled Aleck, wildly.
“Ahoy, my lad! Ahoy!” and something else was cut off by the soft sucking splash of water again, while to make the lads’ position more painful in their efforts to reply, twice over they were conscious of the fact that when they replied with a shout their cries did not pass through the orifice, which the water had closed.
But the tide was ebbing steadily, and the tiny arc of the rocks which showed the way in was growing more open, so that at the end of a few minutes they heard plainly:
“Where’bouts are yer, my lad?”
“In here!” shouted Aleck, but only in face of a dullplosh.
Another minute and the question was repeated, but from whence the lads could hardly tell, for instead of coming from the cavern mouth the words seemed to come from far up the cavern, to be followed by another splash. It was quite half a minute before, taught by experience, Aleck shouted:
“Shut in here! Cave!”
There was another plosh, but they had proof soon after that the words had been heard, for the hail now came:
“Are yer ’live, my lad?”
“Ye-es,” cried Aleck. “Quite!” and then he could in his excitement hardly control a hysterical laugh at the absurdity of the question and answer.
“Thought yer was dead and gone, my lad,” came now, in company with a fainter splashing.
“Tom Bodger!”
“Hullo!” came quickly.
“We’re shut in by the water.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“The cutter’s midshipman and I.”
“Wha–a–at! Then there arn’t nayther on yer dead and drownded, my lad?”
“No–o–o–o!”
“Then I say hooray! hooray! But can’t you swim out?”
“No. We’ve tried.”
“Ho!” came back. “Wait a bit.”
“What for? Can’t you get help for us, Tom?”
“Ay, ay, my lad,” came back. “But jest you wait.”
Then there was silence, and the prisoners joined hands, to kneel, waiting and listening.
“He has gone for help,” said the middy.
“Yes, and before he gets back that little hole that let his words in will be shut up again.”
“Never mind,” said the middy, sagely; “he knows we’re here.”
“Oh, but why didn’t I think to tell him of the zigzag path? I daresay they could get the stones out from above where they were pushed in.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t gone,” said the middy. “Ahoy there!”
There was a peculiar sound as of the water rising up and gurgling along a channel, while a lapping sound at their feet told that the water inside was being put in motion.
“Why, he has dived down,” cried Aleck, suddenly, “so as to try and get to us.”
“Tchah! Nonsense. That squat little wooden-legged man couldn’t swim.”
But at the end of what seemed to be a long period they heard a louder splash, followed by another, and the illuminated water began to dance and a curious ebullition to be faintly seen.
Then there was a panting sigh, and a familiar voice cried:
“Where’bouts are yer?”
“Here, here!” cried the lads, in a breath, and the next minute they were conscious of something swimming towards them, which took shape more and more till they saw that it was a man swimming on his back.
“What cheer-ho!” came now, in the midst of a lot of splashing. “Lend us a hand, my lads, for I’m all at sea here. Thanky! Steady! Let’s get soundings for my legs. Mind bringing that lanthorn a bit forrarder? That’s right; now I can see where I go.”
Tom Bodger had managed to find a hold for his stumps, and stood shaking himself as well as he could for the fact that he had a lad holding tightly on to each hand.
“Well, yer don’t feel like ghostses, my lads!” cried the sailor. “This here’s solid flesh and bone, and it’s rayther disappynting like.”
“Disappointing, Tom?”
“Yes, Master Aleck. Yer see, your uncle says: ‘You find the poor lad’s remains, Bodger,’—remains, that’s what he called it—‘and I’ll give yer a ten-pound Bank o’ Hengland note,’ he says.”
“Oh!” cried Aleck, passionately.
“And the orficer there from the Revenoo cutter, he says: ‘You find the body o’ young Mr Wrighton of the man-o’-war sloop, and there’ll be the same reward for that.’”
“Humph! I should have thought I was worth more than that,” said the midshipman.
“Ay, ay, sir!” cried Tom Bodger, who was squeezing his shirt and breeches as he talked. “So says I, sir; but it’s disappynting, for I arn’t found no corpses, on’y you young gents all as live-ho as fish; and what’s to come o’ my rewards?”
“Oh, bother the rewards, Tom! How did you get in?”
“Dove, sir, and swimmed on my back with my flippers going like one o’ the seals I’ve seen come in here.”
“But we tried to do that, both of us, and we couldn’t do it.”
“Dessay not, sir. Didn’t try on the right tide.”
“Nearly got drowned, both of us, my lad,” said the midshipman. “But don’t let’s lose time. You show the way, and we’ll follow you.”
“No hurry, sir; plenty o’ time. Be easier bimeby. Tide’s got another hour o’ ebb yet. But how in the name o’ oakum did you two gents manage to get in here? I knowed there was a hole here where the seals dove in, and I did mean to come sploring like at some time or other; but it’s on’y once in a way as you can row in.”
Aleck told him in a few words, and the man whistled.
“Well, I’ll be blessed!” he said. “I allus knowed that Eben Megg and his mates must have a store hole somewhere, and p’raps if I’d ha’ lay out to sarch for it I might ha’ found it out. But I didn’t want to go spying about and get a crack o’ the head for my pains. The Revenoo lads’ll find out for theirselves some day; and so you young gents have been the first?”
“Stop a minute,” said Aleck. “What about Eben Megg?”
“Oh, they cotched him days ago, sir—cutter’s men dropped upon him while they was hunting for this young gent’s corpus, and he’s aboard your ship, sir, I expect, along with the other pressed men.”
“But haven’t they been looking for me any more?” said the middy.
“No, sir; they give it up arter they’d caught Eben; and, as I telled yer, there was a reward offered for to find yer dead as they couldn’t find yer living.”
“So that’s why Eben didn’t come back, sailor,” said Aleck, quietly.
“Yes,” said the middy, “but why didn’t he tell the cutter’s officer that we were shut up here?”
“Too bitter about his capture, perhaps, or he might not have had a chance to speak while he was ashore.”
“I don’t believe it was that,” said the middy. “I believe he wouldn’t tell where their storehouse was.”
“And so this here’s the smugglers’ cave, is it?” said Tom Bodger, looking about. “But where’s t’other way out, sir?”
Aleck explained that the smuggler had closed the way up.
“Well, sir, it’s a wery artful sort o’ place, I will say that. Lot o’ good things stored up here, I s’pose?”
“Plenty.”
“Hah! Is there now? Well, it means some prize money, Mr Wrighton, sir, and enough to get a big share.”
“And I deserve it, my man,” said the middy, with something of his old consequential way; “but let’s get out into the daylight. I’m afraid—I’m—that is, I shouldn’t like to be shut in again.”
“No fear, sir. You trust me. Lot more time yet. ’Sides, the tide’ll fall lower to-morrow morning; but I’ll get you out as soon as I can, for your poor uncle’s quite took to his bed, Master Aleck.”
“Uncle has?”
“Yes, sir. Chuffy sharp-spoken gent as he always was, blest if he didn’t say quite soft to me, with the big tears a-standing in his eyes: ‘It’s all over, Bodger, my man,’ he says, ‘and you may have the poor boy’s boat, for I know if he could speak now he would say, “Give it to poor old Tom.”’”
“Poor old uncle!” said Aleck, huskily. “Then you’re cheated again, Tom, and have lost your boat?”
“And hearty glad on it, too, Master Aleck, say I. A-mussy me, my lad, what would the Den ha’ been without you there? The captain wouldn’t ha’ wanted me. I don’t wonder as I couldn’t rest, but come over here every morning and stayed till dark, climbing about the rocks and cliffs, with the birds a-shouting at me and thinking all the time that I’d come arter their young ’uns—bubblins, as we calls ’em, ’cause they’re so fat.”
“And so they haven’t been looking for me any more?” said the middy, in a disappointed tone.
“No, sir; not since they telled me to keep on looking for yer. You see, everybody said as you must ha’ gone overboard and been washed out to sea, same as the captain felt that you’d slipped off the cliff somewhere, Master Aleck, and been drowned. But I kep’ on thinking as both on yer might ha’ been washed into some crivissy place and stuck there, and that’s why I kep’ on peeking and peering about, hoping I might come upon one of you if I didn’t find both; and sure enough, here you are. I don’t know what you gents think on it, but I call it a right-down good morning’s work for such a man as me.”
“But you did not walk over from Rockabie this morning, my man?” said the middy.
“Not walk over, sir? Oh, yes, I did.”
“You must be very tired?”
“Not me, sir. My legs never get tired; and yet the queerest thing about it is that they allus feel stiff.”
“Don’t talk any more, Tom,” said Aleck. “I want to get to business. Now, then, don’t you think we might get out now?”
“Well, yes, sir; p’raps we might. It’s a good deal lighter, you see, since I come, but she’s far from low water yet, and it’ll come much easier when tide’s right down. But can’t I have a bit of a look round, Master Aleck?”
“Of course,” was the reply, and the sailor grinned and chuckled as he ran his eyes over what he looked upon as a regular treasure house for anyone whose dealings were on the sea with boats.
The cavern was lighter now than the two prisoners had ever seen it, so that Tom was able to have a good look; and he finished off by trotting down as near to the mouth of the great place as he could, and then turning to Aleck.
“There,” he said, “I think we might venture out now. You can swim out now without having to dive. What do you say, Mr Wrighton, sir?”
“I think we ought to go at once.”
“Come on, then, gen’lemen. You’ll get a bit wet, but there’s a long climb arterwards up the hot rocks in the sunshine, and you’ll be ’most dry ’fore you get home.”
“Oh, never mind the water,” cried the middy. “My uniform’s spoilt. I’m ready to do anything to get out of here.”
“Will you go first, sir?” cried Tom Bodger.
“No, you found the way in,” was the reply, “so lead the way out.”
“Right, sir. Ready?”
“Then come on.”
The man took three or four of his queer steps, to stand for a moment on the edge of the deep pool, and then went in sidewise to swim like a seal for the low archway, whose weed-hung edges were only a few inches above the surface of the water, and as he reached it to pass under he laid his head sidewise so that the dripping shell-covered weed wiped his cheek.
There had been no hesitation on the part of the prisoners. Aleck sprang in as soon as their guide was a few feet away, and the middy followed, both finding their task delightfully easy as they swam some fifty yards through a low tunnel, whose roof was for the most part so close to the surface that more than once, as the smooth water heaved, Aleck’s face just touched the impending smoothly-worn stone.
But there were two places, only a few yards in, where the arch was broken into a yawning crack, from which the water dripped in a heavy shower.
“Look up as you come along here,” cried Aleck to his companion, and then he shuddered, for his voice raised a peculiar echo, suggesting weird hollows and tunnels, while as he increased his strokes to get past and the middy came under in turn, he shouted again after his leader:
“Why, Tom, that must be where the water snatched us up and nearly drowned us.”
Five minutes later all three were swimming for a rough natural pier, and Tom Bodger gave his head a sidewise wag towards another low cavernous arch.
“’Nother way in there,” he said. “Jynes the one we came out of. You must have seen how the waves dance and splash there in rough weather, Master Aleck?”
“No,” was the reply. “I’ve only seen that it’s a terribly rough bit of coast. I never came down here, and of course I was never out in my boat when it was rough.”
“Course not, sir. It is a coarse bit. I had no end of a job to get down, and I spect that it’s going to be a bit worse going up agen. What do you say to sitting up yonder in the sunshine on that there shelf? The birds’ll soon go. You can make yourselves comf’able and get dry while I go up and get a rope. Dessay I can be back in an hour or so.”
“No,” cried the lads, in a breath. “We’ll climb it if you can.”
Climb up the dangerous cliff they did by helping one another, and with several halts to look down at the still falling tide; and in one of these intervals Aleck exclaimed:
“But I still can’t see how the smugglers could run a boat up and row into that cavern.”
“Course they couldn’t row, sir,” replied Tom, “on’y shove her in. But don’t you see what a beautiful deep cut there is? Bound to say that at the right time they’d run a big lugger close in. Look yonder! It’s just like the way into a dock, and sheltered lovely. Ah, they’re an artful lot, smugglers! You never know what they’re after.”
It was about an hour later that, without passing a soul on their solitary way, the party reached the cliff path down into the Den garden, where no Dunning was visible, and a chill came over Aleck like a warning of something fresh in the way of disaster that he was to encounter.
It came suddenly, but it was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that someone was at the house.
“Wait here,” he whispered to his companions. “Let me go and see my uncle first.”
He crept in unheard, glanced round to see that the lower room was empty, and then went softly up the stairs, his well-soaked boots making as little noise as if they had been of indiarubber.
The study door yielded to a touch, and he stood gazing at the figure of his uncle, seated in his usual place, but with pen, ink and papers thrust aside so that he could bow his grey head down upon his clasped hands.
“Asleep, uncle?” said the lad, softly.
“Aleck, my boy!” cried the old man, springing up to catch the lost one in his arms. “Heaven be thanked! I was mourning for you as dead.”