CHAPTER VIII
THE CAVE IN THE CLIFF
My heart was thumping on my ribs as I thrust and wriggled my body down
the hole. I did not think how I was to get back again; it never once
occurred to me that I might stick in the burrow, and die stifled
there, like a rat in a trap. My one thought was, "I shall save the
coastguards," and that thought nerved me to push on, careless of
everything else. It was not at all easy at first, for the earth fell
in my ears from the burrow-roof, and there was very little room for my
body. Presently, as I had expected, the burrow broadened out--I could
kneel erect in it quite easily; and then I found that I could stand up
without bumping my head. I was not frightened, I was only very
excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco
was very strong. I could see hardly anything--only the light from the
burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two,
and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the
shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I
heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip,
splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For
a moment I stood still, not certain which way to go. Then I settled to
myself the direction from which I had heard the voices, and turned
along the shaft on that side.
When I had walked a few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on
the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking
along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip,
splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran
against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost
made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel
nothing, and then downward on the far side, but could feel nothing;
and then I knocked away a scrap of stone from the top of the wall, and
it seemed to fall for several seconds before a faint splash told me
that it had reached water. The shaft seemed to turn to the right and
left at this low wall, and at first I turned to the left, but only for
a moment, as I soon saw that the right-hand turning would bring me
more quickly to the cliff-face from which I had heard the voices.
After I had made my choice, you may be sure that I went on hands and
knees, feeling the ground in front of me. I went forward very, very
slowly, with the wet mud coming through my knickerbockers, and the
cold drops sometimes falling on my neck from the roof. At last I saw a
little glimmer of light, and there was a turning to the left; and just
beyond the turning there was a chamber in the rock, all lit up by the
sun, as clear as clear. There were holes in the cliff-face, one of
them a great big hole, and the sun shone through on to the floor of
the cave, and I could look out and see the sea, and the seagulls going
past after fish, and the clouds drifting up by the horizon. Very
cautiously I crept up to the entrance to the chamber, and then into
it, so that I could look all round it.
It was not a very large room (I suppose it was fifteen feet square)
and it looked rather smaller than it was, because it was heaped almost
to the roof in one or two places with boxes and kegs, and the various
sea-stores, such as new rope and spare anchors. In one corner of it
(in the corner at which I entered it) a flight of worn stone steps led
downwards into the bowels of the earth. "Aha!" I thought; "so that's
how you reach your harbour!" Then I crept up to one of the piles of
boxes and cautiously peeped over.
I looked over cautiously, for as I entered the room I had the eerie
feeling which one gets sometimes at night; I felt that there was
somebody else in the room. Sure enough there was somebody else--two
somebodies--and my heart leaped up in joy to see them. Sitting on the
ground, tied by the body to some of the boxes over which I peered,
were the two missing coastguards. Their backs were towards me, and
their hands and feet were securely bound; but they were unhurt, that
was the great thing. One of them was quietly smoking, filling the cave
with strong tobacco smoke; the other was asleep, breathing rather
heavily. It was evidently a pleasant holiday for the pair of them. No
other person was in the room, but I saw that on the far side of the
chamber another gallery led on into the cliff to another chamber, and
from this chamber came the sound of many voices talking (in a dull
quiet way), and the slow droning of the song of a drunken man. I shut
my eyes, and lay across the boxes as still as a dead man, trying to
summon up enough courage to speak to the coastguard; and all the time
the drunkard's song quavered and shook, and died down, and dragged on
again, as though it would never end. Afterwards I often heard that
song, in all its thirty stanzas; and I have only to repeat a line of
it to bring back to myself the scene of the sunny cave, with the bound
coastguard smoking, and the smugglers talking and talking just a few
paces out of sight.
"And the gale it roar-ed dismally
As we went to New Barbary,"
said the singer; and then some one asked a question, and some one
struck a light for his pipe, and the singer droned on and on about the
bold Captain Glen, and the ship which met with such disaster.
At last I summoned up enough courage to speak. I crawled over the
boxes as far as I could, and touched the coastguard. "Sh!" I said, in
a low voice, "Don't make a sound. I've come to rescue you."
The man stared violently (I dare say his nerves were in a bad way
after his night in the cave), he dropped his pipe with a little
clatter on the stones, and turned to stare at me.
"Sh!" I said again. "Don't speak. Don't make a sound."
I crept round the boxes to him, and opened my knife. It was a strong
knife, with very sharp blades (Marah used to whet them for me), so
that it did not take me long to cut through the "inch-and-a-half-rope,"
which lashed the poor fellow to the boxes.
"Thankee, master," the man said, as he rose to his feet and stretched
himself. "I was getting stiff. Now, let's get out of here. D'ye know
the way out?"
"Yes," I said, "I think I do. Oh, don't make a noise; but come this
way. This way."
Very quietly we stole out by the gallery by which I had entered. We
made no attempt to rouse the sleeping man; he slept too heavily, and
we could not afford to run risks. I don't know what the coastguard's
feelings were. As for myself, I was pretty nearly fainting with
excitement. I could hear my heart go thump, thump, thump; it seemed to
be right up in my very throat. As we stepped into the gloom of the
gallery, the smugglers behind us burst into the chorus at the end of
the song--
"O never more do I intend
For to cross the raging main
But to live at home most cheerfull-ee,
And thus I end my traged-ee."
I felt that if I could get away from that adventure I, too, would live
at home most cheerfully until the day of my death. We took advantage
of the uproar to step quickly into the darkness of the passage.
Just before we came to the low stone breastwork which had given me
such a shock a few minutes before, we heard some one whistling a bar
of a tune. The tune was the tune of--
"Oh, my true love's listed, and wears a white cockade."
And to our horror the whistler was coming quickly towards us. In
another second we saw him stepping along the gallery, swinging a
lantern. He was a big, strong man, evidently familiar with the way.
"Back," said the coastguard in a gasp. "Get back, for your life, and
down that staircase."
The man didn't see us; didn't even hear us. He stopped at the stone
breastwork, opened his lantern, and lit his pipe at the candle, and
then stepped on leisurely towards the chamber. Our right course would
have been "to go for him," knock him down, knock the breath out of
him, lash his wrists and ankles together, and bolt for the
entrance. But the coastguard was rather upset by his adventure, and he
let the minute pass by. Had he rushed at the man as soon as he
appeared; but, there--it is no use talking. We didn't rush at him, we
scuttled back into the chamber, and then down the worn stone steps cut
out of the rock, which seemed to lead down and down into the bowels of
the earth. As we hurried down, leaping lightly on the tips of our
toes, the quaver of the tune came after us, so clearly that I even
made a guess at the whistler's identity.
When we had run down the staircase about half-way down to sea-level we
found ourselves in a cave as big as the church at Dartmouth. It was
fairly light, for the entrance was large, though low, and at low water
(as it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the
sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a
landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the
sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about
the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of
pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof
dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings,
and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon it;
due, I suppose, to the deep water of the channel. I saw all these
things afterwards, at leisure; I did not notice them very clearly in
that first moment. All that I saw then was a large sea-lugger, lying
moored at the cavemouth, some few feet lower down. She was a beautiful
model of a boat (I had seen that much in seeing her bow from the top
of the cliff), but of course her three masts were unstepped, and she
was rather a handful for a man and a boy. We saw her, and made a leap
for her together, and both of us landed in her bows at the same
instant, just as the man with the lantern, peering down from the top
of the stairs, asked us what in the world we were playing at down
there.
The coastguard made no answer, for he was busy in the bows; I think he
had his knife through the painter in five seconds. Then he snatched up
a boat-hook (I took an oar), and we drove her with all our strength
along the channel into (or, I should say, towards) the open sea and
freedom.
"Hey," cried the man with the lantern, "chuck that! Are you mad?" He
took a step or two down the staircase, in order to see better.
"Drive her, oh, drive her, boy!" cried the coastguard.
I thrust with all my force, the coastguard gave a mighty heave, the
lugger slid slowly seawards.
"Hey!" yelled the smuggler, clattering upstairs, dropping his lantern
down on us. "Hey, Marah, Jewler, Smokewell, Hankin--all of you!
They've got away in the boat."
"Now the play begins," said the coastguard. "Another heave, and
another--together now!"
We drove the lugger forward again, so that half her length thrust out
into the sea. We ran aft to give her a final thrust out, and just at
that moment her bow struck upon the rock at the cave mouth: in the
excitement of the moment we had not realised that one of us was wanted
in the bows to shove her nose clean into the sea. The blow threw us
both upon our hands and knees in the stern sheets; it took us
half-a-dozen seconds to pick ourselves up, and then I realised that I
should have to jump forward and guide the boat clear of all outlying
dangers. As I sprang to the bows there came yells from the top of the
stairs, where I saw half-a-dozen smugglers coming full tilt towards
us.
Some one cried out, "Drop it, drop it, you fool!" Another voice cried,
"Fire!" and two or three shots cracked out, making a noise like a
cannonade. The coastguard gave a last desperate heave, I shoved the
bows clear, and lo! we were actually gliding out. The coastguard's
body was outside the cliff in full sunlight, giving a final thrust
from the cliff wall. And then I saw Marah leap into the stern sheets
as they passed out of the cave; he gave a little thrust to the
coastguard, just a gentle thrust--enough to make him lose his balance
and topple over.
"That's enough now," he said, with a grim glance at me. "That's enough
for one time."
He picked up the coastguard's boat-hook (the man just grinned and
looked sheepish; he made no attempt to fight with Marah) and thrust
the boat back into the cave with half-a-dozen deft strokes. Another
smuggler dropped down into the stern sheets, looked at the coastguard
with a grin, and helped to work the lugger back into the cave. A third
man threw down a sternfast to secure her; a fourth jumped into the bow
and began to put a long splice into the painter which we had cut. We
had tried and we had failed; here we were prisoners again, and I felt
sick at heart lest those rough smugglers should teach us a lesson for
our daring. But Marah just told the coastguard to jump out.
"Out you get," he said, "and don't try that again."
"I won't," said the coastguard.
"You'd better not," said another smuggler. That was all.
We were helped out of the lugger on to the ledge above the channel,
and the smugglers walked behind us up the stairs to the room we had
just left. The other coastguard was still snoring, and that seemed
strange to me, for the last few minutes had seemed like hours.
"Better bring him inside, boss," said one of the smugglers. "He may
try the same game."
"He's got no young sprig to cut his lashings," said Marah. "He'll be
well enough." So they left the man to his quiet and passed on with
their other prisoners into the inner room.
