As It Was in the Beginning Part 25

He fortified the older section with additional material, however, to make absolutely certain it would not abruptly part and drop him into the sea. All morning he worked, while his smoldering fires continued to eat out the hollow for his boat, securing new length to the rungs already provided, since the distance down from the brink of the cliff was fully one hundred feet.

To Elaine he explained that he thought perhaps a cave might exist in the rock. The wailing sounds, it was easy to argue, would indicate some such cavity, which he felt it important to examine. If she somewhat divined the further fact that he hoped to discover a possible retreat, should unforeseen dangers threaten, she made no revelation of her thought.

It was not without considerable anxiety, however, that she finally discovered precisely what he meant to attempt. His ladder, she was certain, was far too frail for any such business as climbing down, above that boiling tide. One careless step, or a parting of the strands, and nothing on earth could save the man from death on the jutting rocks below. She had glanced at the waters under the cliff, and their crystal depths were not at all rea.s.suring.

The thorough precautions against a mishap that Grenville finally completed considerably lessened her fears, yet she had no wish to watch him descend when at length he slipped over the edge. She was gazing with fixed and wide-open eyes at the heap of rocks in which he had fastened the ladder.

The matter to Grenville seemed simple enough. The brink overhung the wall itself, in consequence of which the ladder swung quite free, down the face of the scarp, till it touched at a jutting ledge below. It swayed to and fro and sagged a bit loosely at some of the rungs, but it could not be broken by his weight.

He made no attempt at a rapid descent, neither did he pause to enjoy the scenery. When the ledge was reached he rested, made certain no sharp-edged stone could impinge upon and perhaps cut into his twisted creepers, and again proceeded downward.

His course for a matter of two or three fathoms was rendered rather more difficult by the fact the ladder lay closely bent against the wall, instead of hanging free. The rock face was pitted and exceedingly rough, its indentations ill-arranged for footholds and far too treacherous for any such employment.

Grenville was nearly at the lower lip of this projection before he attempted a look below to determine what he was approaching. He discovered then it was undercut again--and likewise that his ladder was considerably short. Its lower end dangled about with irregular gyrations as he shifted his weight from rung to rung. It was fully two yards above the water. There was nothing in sight on which to plant his feet, so far as he could discern from the point then occupied.

He continued down the ledge. When he reached its base, his suspicions were immediately confirmed. It overhung a cavern, which was not, however, the cave. To the final rung but one of his ladder he descended, and there he rested to have a look about.

He was hanging directly before a ma.s.sive pot-hole in the cliff--a huge, roughly rounded sort of chamber, the roof of which was arched. On the left, it shared its pitted wall with a second and smaller chamber. On the right, its edge was jaggedly broken against a yawning hole. This hole was undoubtedly the cave-mouth described by the doc.u.ments found in the hidden tube.

From this point only, as Grenville could see, would its mouth be readily discovered. Thick curtains of greenery, draped from its neighboring walls of rock, would shield it from view from pa.s.sing boats, unless they should nose to its portals. This, with a swirling and dangerous tide, no craft would be likely to attempt.

The shrubbery, hanging so thickly from the ledge, afforded Grenville a puzzle. He knew it could not be a seaweed, since the tide never rose to such a level. He presently realized it was simply an air plant of unusually luxuriant growth. Its roots had found lodgment in a crevice, where nothing would be likely to disturb it in its possession.

Concerning the possible contents of the cave, its extent, or immediate surroundings, there was nothing to be discovered from his ladder, twist as he might or crane his neck to stare in the cavern's mouth.

He had practically determined to return to the top, shift his ladder along, and once more make the descent, when he realized his effort would be wasted. A thick, broken shelf of the pitted tufa jutted many feet out above the cave, and even beyond the growing weed. Should he hang his ladder directly before the opening, he would find himself, when he came to its end, swung helplessly over the water.

He could see distinctly where the final base of the wall projected into the tideway. It would certainly be no less than ten feet removed from the nearest point he could possibly reach by this particular method.

It occurred to his mind he could lengthen his strands, drop himself off the ladder-end, and swim to the edge of the cave. But, even as he turned to examine the physical features afforded to a swimmer, a huge dark form loafed like a shadow through the crystal tide, to rise beyond and cut the sparkling surface with a blackish dorsal fin. There was no mistaking Mr. Shark.

Grenville nodded, grimly. "Thanks for the timely suggestion," he said, as the monster once more sank. He presently added, "It's a boat or no explorations." Somewhat disappointedly, he returned up the ladder to the top.

"The cave is there," he told Elaine, who promptly sat down, in sheer relief, when she saw him finally safe, "but it has to be entered from the water."

"Oh!" said Elaine. "But why does it have to be entered?"

"Well," said Sidney, at a loss for a better argument, "it might be full of treasure;" and he smiled.

Elaine was no less ready with her answer. "Treasure is certainly indispensable to us here. No wonder we've felt that something was strangely lacking."

"There you are," he rejoined. "I think I can paddle the raft about the cliff, for the tide could never be better."

She was certain that Grenville attached some unusual importance to an inspection of the cave.

"Couldn't I help?" she asked him. "What was the fault of the ladder?"

"Fully six feet too short. Perhaps you'd better watch for pa.s.sing steamers. If we missed one--whom should we blame?"

They had slowly returned to the shelter, where the table was attractively spread.

"What a luncheon!" said Grenville, enthusiastically. "I'll eat in a rush and be back before you know I've gone." He certainly ate with lively promise.

But, after the raft was launched on the tide, he lost all sense of time. He had left his shoes and stockings on the sh.o.r.e. He had brought a torch, lighted, which he lashed in an upright position on the raft. Wading and paddling, punting, pulling, and at times even pushing his craft along the beach, he warmed to his work in the briefest s.p.a.ce, since the tide could hardly have been more favorable to his needs.

The pole he had brought had a hook at the end, bound firmly in place with copper wire. This was an excellent provision, especially when he came to the cliff, where wading was out of the question. He was thus enabled to catch at a ledge, or any open crevice, and draw his unwieldy float along, while fending it off from various rocks on which it might otherwise have pounded.

His work was hard and slow. The distance was not discouraging, however, and with some of the swirls to a.s.sist, here and there, he finally came to a broken sort of cape, from which he readily saw his dangling ladder. After that a hot bit of fighting was required to maintain his position near the wall. The tide was uneasy--a hungry, ugly swirl that alternately came and subsided.

When he pa.s.sed it at last his task was done, for the cave was a stone's toss away. It was not even then to be seen, and its presence in the cliff would scarcely have been suspected. But Grenville knew the luxuriant plant that grew across a portion of its entrance. When he presently moored his raft to a rock fairly under the shadow of the weed, the cave was just above him.

Under his feet the ledge was rough and sloping. It was pitted so completely as to form a rude natural stairway to the opening under the overhanging shelf. This mouth to the cavern was hardly six feet wide and not more than four in height. Its access was comparatively easy.

Grenville, with his torch in hand, was presently gazing within.

Obliged to stoop, and beholding nothing but absolute darkness ahead of his light, he stumbled against a lumpy vein of rock--and nearly met with disaster. He barely halted at the edge of a pool of ebon water.

After all his effort to gain the cave, it appeared to be filled with this inklike acc.u.mulation. The pool was absolutely still. Not a ripple disturbed its shining surface. How deep it was and how far it extended from the ledge that held it from flowing into the sea, could not be gauged by Grenville's torch, as he held it aloft to stare at the wall of velvet gloom.

He sounded a note that rolled about and reverberated weirdly. But he could not determine from the echoes how far the waves had traveled.

Casting his dull-red illumination to the left, and lower down, he proceeded a little along the ledge, till it merged in an upright wall.

There was nothing at all to be seen in this direction save water and rock, that faded away into Stygian darkness beyond.

He retraced his steps and explored the ledge on the right. This led him considerably further than the first had done before it was similarly ended. He was then aware the cavern was of no inconsiderable dimensions, at least with regard to its width. He raised his eyes towards the ceiling, where nothing was to be seen.

At length he bethought him of another test--that of throwing lumps of rock against the walls. There were fragments in plenty scattered loosely at his feet. The first one he threw went straight out ahead--and presently thumped on something solid. He reckoned the distance some sixty feet away, but admitted it might have been eighty.

Every missile he cast right, left, or at an angle promptly reported a wall; and some plumped back into water. The cave was not gigantic, but all its floor was apparently flooded. His hand, which he thrust in the water where he stood, groped blindly and found no bottom. He rolled up his sleeve and tried again, without more definite results. The water, however, was warm.

"Good place for a swim, in any case," he told himself, aloud; and, planting his torch with a sudden determination that he would not retreat with information so utterly meager, he stripped off his clothing at once. He let himself into the ebon depths, with his torch held well above the water. He had rather expected to be able to wade, but he sank to his neck without sounding to the bottom.

Swimming almost perpendicularly, employing one hand only, he presently lost all sight of the walls and was out in an unknown pool of blackness. Save for a slight sensation of its weirdness, the experience was decidedly pleasant. He tasted the water as he swam and found that it was fresh. He turned to look out at the opening, but could barely see light through the weeds.

Some twenty or thirty feet from the ledge, his feet encountered a ridge. It was stone, and across it he waded to a greater depth beyond.

Yet once again he was soon enabled to stand erect and walk along the bottom. The broken, uneven surface that he felt with his feet made his progress slow and careful.

He had presently crossed the underground pond, up the sloping bank of which he was soon making rapid progress. He emerged on a dry ledge beyond. Even then the walls were not to be seen till he walked a rod straight onward.

The briefest examination sufficed to establish the fact he had come to a sort of natural antechamber to the larger cavern he had crossed.

Also, apparently, the entire place was as empty as a last year's bird's-nest.

Vaguely disappointed, though he hardly knew why, the man surveyed the place anew, by the light that entered at the opening as well as by that of his torch. He saw at once that, could it be drained, the place would afford a retreat of amazing security for anyone needful of shelter. He was also certain he could drain it in a day by blasting through the ledge of rock that blocked the entrance from the sea and so retained the pool.

With one more brief and cursory examination of the rocky structure about him, he was turning away when something foreign about a slab of stone, that seemed a fragment of the solid wall, attracted his attention.

He laid his hand upon its top as if to pull it down. It came away so readily it all but fell on his feet. Behind it the crudest sort of masonry walled up a natural door.

Ten minutes later, standing on the heap of blocks he had tumbled rapidly down in forming a gap through four feet at least of this bulkhead, Grenville thrust his torch within a nichelike chamber of the cavern.