Carette of Sark Part 43

"Tiens!" said Carette, pointing suddenly. And looking, we saw three boats pull out from the channel between Herm and Jethou. One came past us towards the north-east, and Uncle George made us lie flat behind gorse cushions till it was out of sight round Bec du Nez, though by crawling a little way up the head we could see it lying watchfully about a mile away. Another went off round Little Sercq to stop any communication with Jersey. The third lay in the way between Sercq and Peter Port.

"M. Torode shuts the doors," said my grandfather tersely. "B'en! we will try in the dark."

Between the softness of the turf and the heat of the sun and my great weariness, I was just on the point of falling asleep, when Uncle George came back from a look at his cleft, and picked up his loads, and said, "Come!" and five minutes later we were standing behind him in the salt coolness of the little black chasm, among the slabs and boulders and the fresh sea pools. And still we saw no entrance.

But he went to the inner side of a great slab that lay wedged against the wall of the chasm, and, stooping there, dragged out rock after rock, cunningly piled so that the waves could not displace them, until a small opening was disclosed behind the leaning slab. It was no more than three feet high, and we had to creep in on our hands and knees, which my grandfather, from his size and stiffness, found no easy matter.

The tunnel led straight in for a s.p.a.ce of twenty feet or so, and then struck upwards, with a very rough floor which made no easy crawling ground, and a roof set with ragged rocks for unwary heads. The little light that came in round the corner of the slab in the dark chasm very soon left us, and we crawled on in the dark, hoping, one of us at all events, that the road was not a long one. And suddenly we breathed more freely and found a welcome s.p.a.ce above our heads.

Uncle George struck flint and steel and lit a candle, and we found ourselves in a long narrow chamber, which looked just a fault in the rocks, or the s.p.a.ce out of which the softer stuff had sunk away. The roof we could not see, but from the slope of the walls on either side I thought they probably met at a point a great way up, and the narrow crack of a cave ran far beyond our sight.

"My Boutiques," said Uncle George, "and no man--no living man but myself has ever been here till now, so far as I know." And round the walls we saw a very large number of neatly piled kegs and packages, at which my grandfather said, "Ah ha, mon beau!" and Uncle George smiled cheerfully in the candle-light.

"The Great Boutiques lie over there," he said, pointing. "There are communications, high up along the cross shelves. But they need not trouble you. I am quite certain no man but myself knows them. So if you hear the waves tumbling about in the big cave you don't need to be frightened."

"And how far does this go?" asked my grandfather, trying to see the end.

"Right through the Eperquerie. It runs into a water cave there. Its mouth is below tide level, but sometimes the light comes through. If you want brandy, Phil, broach a keg. If you want more tobacco, open a package."

"And water?" asked Carette.

"About fifty yards along there on the right in a hollow place. You can't miss it."

"Keep your hearts up, my children," said my grandfather. "You will be quite safe here. Our work lies outside, and we must get back. George will come to you as soon as the way is clear. G.o.d be with you!"

"You are quite sure there are no ghosts about, Uncle George?" asked Carette in a half-scared whisper, for she was still a devout believer in all such things.

"I've never seen the ghost of one," said Uncle George, with a laugh. "Here, Phil! Take this!" and he handed me from his pocket an old flint-lock pistol, of which I knew he had a pair. "You won't need it, but it makes one feel bolder to carry it. If you see any ghosts, blaze away at them, and if you hit them we'll nail their bodies up outside to scare away the rest."

Then, still laughing, to cheer us, I think, they bade us good-bye and went off down the tunnel.

Carette was already spreading out the hay, which Uncle George and my grandfather had got through the narrow ways with difficulty. Their voices died away and we were alone, and I was so heavy that, from sitting on the hay, I rolled over on it, and was asleep before I lay flat.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

HOW LOVE COULD SEE IN THE DARK

Carette says I slept through three days and nights, but that is only one of her little humours. When I woke, however, I was in infinitely better case than before, and as she herself was fast asleep she may have been so all the time.

It was quite dark. The candle had either burned out or she had extinguished it. But in the extraordinary silence of that still place I could hear her soft breathing not far away, and I lay a long time listening to it. It was so calm and regular and trustful, as though no harmful and threatening things were in the world, that it woke a new spirit of confident hope in me, and I lay and listened, and thought sweet warm thoughts of her.

It seemed a long time, and yet not one whit too long, before the soft breathing lost its evenness, and at last I could not hear it at all, and knew she was waking. And presently she stirred, and after a time she said softly--

"Phil ... are you awake?"

"Yes, my dear," I said, sitting up, and feeling first for her, for love of the feel of her, and then in my pockets for my flint and steel.

"How still it is, and how very dark!" she whispered.

"I'll soon see how you're looking;" and my sparks caught in the tinder and I lit a candle.

"You slept very sound," said she, blinking at the light.

"I had not slept for nearly ninety hours, and they had held more for me than any ninety weeks before. But it was rude of me to go off like that and leave you all alone."

"You could no more help it than I can help being very hungry. You have slept three days and three nights, I believe. I wonder George Hamon is not back for us."

"Let's look at the milk," I said, and tasted it and found it sweet.

"That's because the air here is so cool and even," said Carette.

"Well, I feel all the better, anyway, and so do you, I'll be bound. I'm beginning to think, you know, that we were over fearful perhaps, and that we need not have come hiding here at all."

"We'll know better when we hear what's going on outside. Your grandfather and George Hamon are not men to be over fearful, and they thought it well."

"That is so," I said, feeling better at that.

"I wonder if it is day or night, and how long we've really been in here?"

"Long enough to be hungry, anyway," I said, heartily ready to eat. And we fell to on Aunt Jeanne's ham and rabbit pie, Carette cutting up all I ate into small pieces with my knife, since we had forgotten to bring any other.

We drank up the milk out of the big-bellied tin can, and never was there sweeter milk or sweeter can, for Carette had first drink. And then, lest it should get foul, we started off to find the fresh water to wash it out and bring back a supply.

There was no mistaking the hollow place where the fresh water was. The light of the lantern fell on many a narrow rift in the walls of rock on either side, all sharp cracks and fissures, with rough-toothed edges, as though the solid granite had been split with mighty hammer-strokes. The seams were all awry, and the lines and cracks were all sharp and straight, though running into one another and across in great confusion. And, of a sudden, in the midst of this tangle of straight clefts and sharp-pointed angles, we came on a little rounded niche where the wall was scooped out in a graceful curve from about our own height to the ground. It was all as smooth and softly rounded as if wrought by a mason's chisel, and as we stood looking at it with surprise, because it was so different from all the rest, a movement of the lantern showed us a greater wonder still. At our feet, in a smooth round basin, bubbled the spring, and looked so like a great dark eye looking up at us in a dumb fury that we both stood stark still staring back at it.

The dark water rushed up from below in coils and writhings like the up-leap of the tide in the Gouliot Pa.s.s, and our lantern set golden rings in it which floated brokenly from the centre to the sides, and gave to it a strange look of life and understanding. So strong was the pressure from below that the centre of the little pool seemed higher than the sides. It looked as though the pent-up force within was striving all the time to shoot up to the roof and any moment might succeed.

But the strangest thing of all was that with all this look of hidden power there was no sound, and no drop of water overflowed the hollow basin. The ground we stood on was a slab of solid rock and dry as bone,--no splash, no sound, no drop outside,--only the silent and powerful up-thrust of the water from below, the silent golden rings that tumbled to the sides of the basin, and the constant expectation of something more which never came.

It was Carette's quick understanding that named it.

"It is like Krok," she whispered, and the word was said. It was all as like Krok--not the outside man, but the inner Krok, dumb and powerful, silently doing his appointed work--as anything that could be imagined.

"Yes," I said. "It is like Krok. It is very wonderful--running like that all through, the ages--since the cave was made anyway--very wonderful."

She stooped to dip her hand and taste it, and then drew back.

"It looks as if it would bite," she said, and I took off the lid of the can and scooped up a draught and drank it.

"The sweetest water I ever tasted, and cold as ice. It is as good as the water at La Tour."

Then she drank also, and then she washed out the milk-can, but would not pour the dirty water back into the basin. "It would be an offence," she said simply, and I felt the same.

Then we left our can there and went on along the cleft, which grew narrower and narrower till we could only go singly. And so we came at last into a sound of waters in front, and going cautiously, found ourselves in a somewhat wider place, with dull waves tumbling hollowly at our feet.