The adventure in the Rill cave was talked about for a few days, and
several plans were made for its further exploration; but, in spite of
the talking, no further visit was made in that direction.
"You see, we ought to get a boat," Fred said, "and row right to the
mouth, and go in that way next time, and we haven't got a boat."
"And no likelihood of getting one," said Scarlett, thoughtfully. "Shall
we go down again, and take your Samson with us this time?"
"I don't see that there's any good in it; and see what a mess we should
be in again. I was full of little tiny bits of slate all in my hair,
and down my back, and, after all, it wasn't worth the trouble."
"Made me feel a bit queer. I say, Scar, only fancy being shut up there,
and starving to death."
Scarlett gave an involuntary shiver.
"Don't talk about it."
"I say, starving to death makes you think about eating. When are your
people coming over again to supper?"
"I don't know," said Scarlett, with an uneasy sensation.
"What's the matter, Scar?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure. I think your father and mine have fallen
out again."
"What makes you think that?"
"Something I heard my mother saying to him."
"Well, they'll soon be friends again, I dare say."
"I hope so. But, Fred, how everybody seems to be talking now about the
troubles in the east."
"Well, let them," laughed Fred. "We don't want any of their troubles in
the west. What do you say to an afternoon's nutting?"
"The nuts are not half ripe."
"Well, let's get your Nat's ferret, and try for a rabbit."
"He would not lend it to us."
"Let's go down on the shore, and collect shells for your Lil."
"She has more than she wants now."
"Well, let's do something. I vote we go down and hunt out the way into
that passage. We can do that without getting our heads full of slate."
Scarlett acceded readily, the more so that ever since their adventure in
the passage, the place had had a peculiar fascination for both lads.
They often stopped in the middle of some pursuit to talk about the
curious idea of making a door to be entered by lying down, and
contriving it out of a stair. Then there were the ingenious
peculiarities of the old passage, and the strange gloom of the oak
chamber, and the dark vault, with its heap of old arms, which they
regretted not to have brought out to try and restore to something like
their former condition.
For, in spite of previous failure, the idea of discovering the second
entrance to that passage was often suggesting itself to the lads; and,
in consequence, they began to haunt the edge of the lake, feeling sure
that some day or another accident would direct them to the very spot
they had searched for so long.
Scarlett insisted that they would find the opening right down in the
water, while, on the other hand, Fred maintained the opposite.
"Nobody would be such a noodle as to build his back-door right down in
the water," he said, "unless he meant the place for a bath. No; we
shall find that doorway out in the wood somewhere, you mark my words,
Scar. I dare say, if we were to take billhooks and cut and hack away
the branches, we should find it soon enough."
Scarlett shook his head, but joined in the search, one which, in spite
of their peering about, proved to be in vain, and, after being well
scratched by brambles and briars, Scarlett had his own way again, and
they began to hunt the shore.
The broad sheet of water ran up in quite a bay toward the fine old
English mansion, and round this bay were dense clumps of hazels, patches
of alder, and old oak-trees grew right on the edge of the perpendicular
bank, their roots deep down beneath the black leaf-mould, which here
formed the bottom of the clear water.
"It must be here somewhere," said Scarlett, one sunny afternoon, as they
sat on the mossy roots of one of the great oaks, and idly picked off
sheets of delicate green vegetable velvet and flakes of creamy and grey
lichen to throw into the water.
"Yes, it must be here somewhere, of course; but I don't see any use in
getting scratched by briars for nothing. We never seem to get any
nearer to it. Perhaps we were wrong, and it's only a kind of well,
after all."
"No," said Scarlett; "they would not make a well there."
"Then we got muddled over the way we went, and, perhaps, while we are
looking for the entrance this side, it's over the other."
"No," said Scarlett again, "I don't think that."
"But if there had been a way in here from the lake, some one must have
seen it before now. We should have noticed it when we were fishing or
nesting. Or, if we had not seen it, your Nat or one of the other
gardeners must have found it."
"No, they must not. I don't see any must about it. Perhaps it's too
cleverly hidden away, or I shouldn't wonder if, since it was made, a
tree had grown all over the entrance, and shut it right up."
"And we shall never find it."
"Not unless we cut the tree down."
"And, of course, we don't know which tree to cut."
"And if we did, my father would not have a tree touched on any account.
Remember how angry he was with the wind?"
"What, when it blew down the big elm?"
"Yes."
There was a pause.
"I say," said Fred, yawning, "let's give it up. What do we care about
where the passage comes out! We know where it goes in."
"Foxes always have two holes," said Scarlett, dreamily.
"So do rabbits. Lots of holes sometimes. But we're not foxes, and
we're not rabbits."
"No; but you'll be like a water-rat directly, if you sit on that moss.
It's as slippery as can be close to the edge. Come and get some nuts."
"Not ripe enough," said Fred, idly.
"Never mind; let's get some, whether or no."
"Where shall we go? We've got all there are about the edge of the
lake."
"Let's go down there by the big oaks. There's a great clump of nuts
just beyond, where we have not been yet."
"Oh yes, we have," said Fred, laughing; "leastwise, I have--one day when
I came over and you weren't at home."
"That's always your way, Fred. I never come over to your place and take
your things."
"Halloa!" laughed Fred, rising slowly from where he had lounged upon the
mossy, buttress-like roots. "Who came and helped himself to my
gilliflower apples?"
Scarlett laughed. "Well, they looked so tempting, and we were to have
picked them that day. Come along."
They went crushing and rustling through the woody wilderness for about a
hundred yards from the side of the lake. It was a part sacred to the
birds and rabbits, a dense dark thicket where oaks and beeches shut out
the light of day, and for generations past the woodman's axe had never
struck a blow. Here and there the forest monarchs had fallen from old
age, and where they had left a vacancy hazel stubs flourished, springing
up gaily, and revelling on the rotten wood and dead leaves which covered
the ground, and among which grew patches of nuts and briar, with the
dark dewberry and swarthy dwale.
Here, as they walked, the lads' feet crushed in the moss-covered, rotten
wood, and at every step a faint damp odour of mould, mingled with the
strong scent of crushed ferns and fungi, rose to their nostrils.
"Never mind the nuts," said Fred; "let's get out in the sunshine again.
Pst! there he goes."
He stopped short as he spoke, watching the scuttling away of a rabbit,
whose white cottony tail was seen for a moment before it disappeared in
a tunnel beneath a hazel clump.
"No; we'll have a few while we are here," said Scarlett, making a bound
on to the trunk of a huge oak which had been blown down and lay
horizontally; but while one portion of its roots stood up shaggy and
weird-looking, the rest remained in the ground, and supported the life
of the old tree, which along its mighty bole was covered with sturdy
young shoots for about thirty feet from the roots. There it forked into
two branches, each of which was far bigger than the trunk of an ordinary
tree; but while one was fairly green, the other was perfectly dead, and
such verdure as it displayed was that of moss and abundant patches of
polypody, which flourished upon the decaying wood.
Opposite the spot where Scarlett leaped upon the tree-trunk--that is to
say, on the other side--the thicket was too dense to invite descent, and
the lad began to walk along toward the fork, pressing the young branches
aside as he went, followed by Fred, who had leapt up and joined him.
"Here, I'm getting so hot," cried the latter. "What's the good of
slaving along here! Let's go back."
"I don't like going back in anything," replied Scarlett, as he walked on
till he reached the fork, and continued his way along the living branch
of the old tree, with Fred still following, till they stood in the midst
of a maze of jagged and gnarled branches rising high above their heads,
and shutting them in.
These dead boughs were from the fellow limb to that on which they stood,
the two huge trunks being about six feet apart.
"There, now we must go back," said Fred.
"No. It looks more open there," cried Scarlett. "If we could jump on
to the other trunk, we could go on beyond."
"Well, anybody could jump that," said Fred.
"Except Fred Forrester," replied Scarlett, mockingly.
"What! not jump that? I'll soon show you."
"No, no; you can't do it, Fred, and you may hurt yourself."
"Well, that will not hurt you. Here goes."
"Mind that branch there."
"Oh yes, I'll mind the branches; and you have to do it when I've done.
Way he!"
Fred stooped down, with his feet close together and his arms pressed to
his sides, bent forward and jumped cleverly quite over the intervening
space, and came down upon the great dead moss-covered trunk.
There was a crash, and it seemed to Scarlett for the moment that his
companion's heels had slipped, and that he had gone down on the other
side among the bushy growth that sprung up; but a second glance showed
him that the apparently solid trunk was merely a shell, through which
Fred had passed completely out of sight.
"Hoi! Fred! Hurt yourself!" cried Scarlett, laughing heartily.
There was no reply.
"Fred! Hoi! Where are you?"
Still no reply. And now, beginning to feel alarmed, Scarlett lowered
himself down, and forced his way through the tangle of little shrubby
boughs growing round him, to the dead trunk, and found himself within a
breastwork of rotten bark as high as he could reach, and which crumbled
away as he tried to get up, one great green mossy patch breaking down
and covering him with damp, fungus-smelling touchwood.
"Fred! Where are you? Don't be stupid, and play with a fellow. Do you
hear?"
Still there was no reply, and Scarlett gave an angry stamp on the soft
ground.
"He's hiding away. I won't trouble about him," muttered the boy. Then
aloud--"Very well, lad. I shan't come after you. I'm going back to the
lake side."
Scarlett began to struggle back, making a great deal of rustling and
crackling of dead wood; but he had not the slightest intention of
leaving his companion behind, in case anything might have happened to
him. So he clambered back through the brush of oak shoots on to the
sound limb, and walked slowly back to the folk to try and walk along the
dead portion of the tree; but before he had progressed six feet, he
began to find that it was giving way, so he descended, and then slowly
creeping in and out among the dead branches, sometimes crawling under
and sometimes over, he began to make his way to the spot where Fred had
disappeared.
It proved, however, a far more difficult task than he had imagined, for
pieces of the jagged oak boughs caught in his jerkin; then he found that
in stretching over one leg he had stepped into a perfect tangle of
bramble, whose hooked thorns laid tight hold of his breeches, and
scratched him outrageously as he tried to draw his limb back. Finding
that to go forward was the easier, he pushed on, and took three more
steps, vowing vengeance against his companion the while.
"It's horribly stupid of me," he muttered. "I don't see why I should
take all this trouble to help a fellow who is only playing tricks, and
will laugh when I find him. Oh, how sharp!"
Still there was the latent thought that Fred might have hurt himself,
and Scarlett pressed on; but, all the same, seeing in imagination Fred's
laughing face and mocking eyes. In fact, so sure, after all, did he
feel that his companion was watching him from somewhere close by, that
he kept thrusting the rough growth aside, and looking in all directions.
"I'll give him such a topper for this," he muttered; and then as he
struggled on another foot, he suddenly stopped short, looked straight
ahead, and exclaimed loudly, "There, I can see you. Don't be stupid,
you old ostrich, hiding there. Now then, come out."
Scarlett's ruse was a failure. "He knows it isn't true," muttered the
lad. "Serve me right for telling lies. It was only my fun, Fred," he
cried hastily, to make honest confession of his fib. "But don't go on
like that. Come out now, and let's get back. It makes me so hot."
He listened, and in the stillness of the wilderness he could have heard
any one breathing, if he had been close at hand; but all was perfectly
still, until, high up in a neighbouring tree, a greenfinch uttered its
mournful little harsh note, which sounded like the utterance of the word
_wheeze_.
"Surely he hasn't hurt himself," muttered Scarlett; and then aloud, as
an uncomfortable sensation came over him--"Here, Fred! Fred! lad, where
are you? Why don't you speak?"
"As if I don't know where he is," muttered Scarlett again, now growing
thoroughly alarmed. "He must have slipped and hurt his back.--All
right; I'm coming," he cried. "With you directly, as soon as I can get
through this horrible tangle.--That's better. Now then, what's the
matter? Fred, where are you? I say, do call out, or something. I
don't like it. Fred, lad, are you hurt?"
And all this time he was forcing his way onward, the brambles tearing
and the old oak wood crackling. The greenfinch uttered its mournful
_wheeze_ once more, and fled in alarm as Scarlett broke down a
good-sized branch which barred his way, the rotten dry wood snapping
with a sharp report; and then, panting and hot after his heavy labour to
get through so short a space, he forced himself to the place where Fred
had landed, and, to his utter astonishment, found that on his side the
whole of the trunk was gone, merely leaving the shell-like portion which
had impeded him before, while below the crumbled tree-trunk was a great
gap.
For a few moments he stood there aghast. Then, recovering his presence
of mind, he pushed aside more of the growth which impeded him, and
looked down into a narrow pit which was choked with broken wood and
ferns.
"Fred!" he shouted; but there was no reply. There, however, beneath
him, he could see his companion's head and shoulders, with eyes closed,
or seeming to be in the dim light, and only about five feet below where
he stood.
Without a moment's hesitation, but trembling the while for fear that
this might be some terribly deep pit into which his companion might fall
if once the broken boughs which supported him gave way, Scarlett tried
bough after bough of the old oak to find one upon which he could depend;
but they all crackled in a way that threatened snapping if he trusted
one; so, reaching back, he got hold of a stout hazel which seemed to be
a dozen or fourteen feet high, dragged it down, and holding it by
twisting his hand among the twigs at the top, he began to descend.
At every movement the earth crumbled, and the bed of rotten wood
supporting Fred, as he lay back with his face to the light, shook so
that at any moment Scarlett expected to see it descend into the profound
abyss below. But in spite of this, as he climbed down the short
distance, he realised the state of affairs--that in its fall the oak had
crushed in the masonry arch over some old well-like place, leaving this
terrible hole securely covered till the wood had rotted away; and that
now it had been Fred's misfortune to leap upon the spot, go through, and
be held up by the broken wood, which formed a kind of rough scaffold a
short distance below.
Should he run back for help?
No; he could not leave Fred like that. And yet when he reached him he
was afraid that the slightest touch would send him down; and now he
realised how fortunate it was that Fred had been hurt, and had remained
insensible, for if he had struggled, the possibility was that he must
have gone through at once.
Short as the distance was, Scarlett had to take the greatest
precautions, for, as he tried to get foothold, something gave way
beneath him, and he hung by the hazel, feeling as if all the blood in
his body had rushed to his heart, for there was a loud hollow splash,
which went echoing horribly away, and he found himself with his eyes on
a level with the old crumbling masonry forming an arch.
He recovered himself though directly, for he could stretch out a hand
and touch Fred.
The touch had instant effect, for the lad opened his eyes, stared at him
wildly, and then said quickly--
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing much, if you are careful. You have fallen, and are hanging
here. Now--"
"Fallen? Oh yes, I remember; the tree," cried Fred. "Oh, my head, my
head!"
"Never mind your head," whispered Scarlett. "Now listen."
"I say, what hole's this? Is it a well?" said Fred, eagerly.
"Don't, pray don't talk. Now, can you reach up and get hold of the
hazel above my hands?"
"Dare say I can," said Fred, coolly. "Yes. There!"
"Then be careful. You are held up by that broken wood. Now try and
draw yourself out."
"Can't," said Fred, after one effort. "I'm held tight; wedged in by
this wood."
"Try again; but be careful, whatever you do."
"Wait a moment. Oh, my head, my head! I hit the back of it on
something."
"Ah, mind!" cried Scarlett, in agony. "Don't think about what is
beneath you, but try to climb up."
"Of course: only my head hurts so. I gave it such a knock."
"Yes, yes," cried Scarlett, impatiently; "but do mind."
"Well, I am minding; only don't be in such a fuss. I must get this
piece of broken bough away."
"No," cried Scarlett, in agony; "don't leave go your hold."
"But can't you see," cried Fred, impatiently, "that this is just like a
wire trap? I've gone through it, and the points are all round me,
holding me from coming back."
"Yes, I see something of the sort; but if you leave go, you may fall."
"How?"
"By passing through. Now, I'll pull you if I can. Make a struggle at
once before you grow weaker."
"Wait a bit. I'm not going to grow weaker. I mean to get stronger.
Don't you fidget. I'll be up there in no time."
Scarlett groaned in his nervous agony, and the great drops stood upon
his brow. He had found hold for one foot by thrusting it in above a
snake-like root which formed quite a loop in the broken-away soil, and
now, reaching down, he thrust his hand within the collar of Fred's
jerkin, and held with all his force.
In those moments of excitement, he could not help thinking how often it
was that the looker-on suffered far more than the one in peril, and he
found himself marvelling at his companion's coolness, suspended there as
he was with the dreadful echoing abyss below him, that which had given
forth so terrible a splash when the stones of the old arch gave way.
"Now then," cried Fred, as he gazed in his companion's ghastly face,
"when I say `Now,' you give a good tug, and I'll shake myself clear in
no time."
"No, no; I dare not," faltered Scarlett.
"What a coward! Well, then, let go, and let me do it myself."
"No, no, Fred; pray take my advice. Don't attempt to stir like that.
Only try making one steady draw upward. As soon as you get free of
those broken branches, which hold you so tightly, they'll all fall with
a splash below."
"Of course they will," said Fred, coolly.
"I don't seem to be able to make you understand your danger."
"Isn't any," said Fred.
"No danger?"
"No; and, look here, it's getting precious cold to my legs, so here
goes."
"Fred, listen! If you shake and move those branches which hold you
down, you will go to the bottom."
"Can't," cried Fred.
"How can you be so foolish, when I am advising you for your good?"
"I'm not foolish. I want to get out, and you want me to stay."
"But you'll fall to the bottom of this horrible hole."
"Can't," cried Fred.
"Can't?"
"No; I'm standing on the bottom now."
"Fred!"
"Well, so I am, with the water just over my knees."
"Oh!"
"Well, if you don't believe it, come down here and try."