THE HOME OF THE MONSTER.
It was now growing dusk. The loneliness of the place was extreme. A
few sea-gulls were wheeling and crying in the dull air overhead. They
had come back from their long day's fishing far out to sea and up and
down the coast, and were leisurely wheeling, scouting, and sailing
shoreward to their homes among the crags.
Nothing else stirred or broke the stillness, except the sea--the
imperial, the insatiable, the eternal sea!--the sea that for ever
chafes and storms, and seeks to eat away or overwhelm the land because
it spurns and writhes under its function of merely filling up the
hollows of earth and balancing the volume of the world.
If all the solids of the earth were turned smooth in the mighty lathe
that drives the earth round its axis, then water would be supreme, and
this planet would be a polished, argent sphere, flashing through
interspaces between clouds as it spun and flew along the orbit of gold
woven of light for it by the sun.
Day and night the waters work without ceasing to overwhelm the earth.
Day and night the torrents tear down the sand and boulders and trees
of the mountains and fling them into the hidden hollows at the mouths
of rivers. All the deltas of the world are offerings of the torrents
and rivers towards carrying out the grand scheme of the oceans
metropolitan. Pool and tarn and lake and inland sea, and remotest
waters that touch undreamed-of isles, are daily and nightly fretting
or tearing away the uncomplaining shores.
The sun and moon and winds are leagued against the pastoral earth.
Daily the sun transports millions of tons of water from the harmless
plains of deep-sea waters, and the wind takes these vaporous foes of
the land and hurls them on the loftiest mountains, so that they may
gain the greatest speed and rending force and carrying power as they
fly back with spoils of earth to their old friend the sea. The sun
splits the cliffs with heat, and the winds lend fascines to the waves,
so that the injured portions may be reached, cast down, and another
line of defence destroyed.
Lest the sun and the winds and the rivers are not enough to accomplish
the ruin of man's territory, the moon--the gentle moon of poets and
lovers--the cold, frigid moon helps with that coldest of all things on
earth, the glacier, to complete the havoc. The power of the wind is
but partial, intermittent; that of the moon and the glacier general,
everlasting. The tides are the heights commanding the outworks of the
land; the moving fields of ice unsuspected traitors, in the garb of
solidity, sapping the walls of the citadel.
Even now the list of enemies is not complete. In the core and centre
of the earth itself the arch-traitor, the mightiest traitor of all,
lies, gravitation, which should naturally be the lieutenant of the
denser of the two combatants. This is the most relentless, the most
unmerciful leveller of all. It seizes with equal avidity upon the moat
that the sunlight only makes visible, and the loosened but yet
unapportioned cliff of a thousand feet high, cut by the river of a
Mexican cañon.
Electricity, the irresistible enemy and imponderable slave of man, is
on the side of the waters. It binds the vapours of the oceans
together, and scatters them when it reaches the hills. It rends trees
and stones and buildings, and flings them down ready for easy
porterage by the more methodical water.
One of these forces that ought to be on the side of the land,
gravitation, has deserted its own side for the water. It is one force,
and is universally operative. One of these forces that ought to be on
the side of the sea has deserted its own side for the land. It is one
force, but it operates through hundreds of thousands, of millions of
agents; it is the coral insect. It transmutes the waters which give
life and sustenance to it into land against which the waters war. It
raises up an island where there ought to be two hundred fathoms of
water. It uses up more material in making islands than all the great
rivers put together deposit at their deltas.
The only loyal servant land has is the central fire. It can throw up
in one minute as much as all the others can tear down in a hundred
years. The central fire pushes an ocean aside with as much ease as a
wave raises a boat. It throws up the Andes in less time than it took
the sea, with its allied forces, to rob England of Lyonnesse.
The coral insect and the central fire, the least and the hugest of the
world's working forces, are more than equal to all the forces arrayed
against them, and are the humble and the terrible friends of man.
Here, by this gloomy sea, no coral insect toiled, no earthquake
heaved, no volcano thrust up a flaming torch of hope to heaven. Here
the enemies of the land had no foe to encounter but the resolute
indifference of the veteran cliffs. Here the sea, and the tides, and
the winds, and gravitation worked on unchallenged by active
resistance. Year after year, almost imperceptible pieces of cliff
fell, were engulfed. Year after year the incessant action of the waves
was gnawing deeper and deeper into the heart of the land. Year after
year the adamantine substance of the Black Rock was diminishing,
though in a generation no man noticed a change in the Rock, and few a
change in the cliff.
This coast was honeycombed with caves. In the summer time, when the
weather was fine, pleasure parties put off from Kilcash for "The
Caves," as the district in which they were to be found was, with
peculiar want of fancy or imagination in so imaginative a race, called
by the inhabitants of the village.
The region of caves was all to the east of Kilcash, and extended along
several miles of coast. Some caves were wide-mouthed, shallow, low,
uninteresting; others spacious, lofty, ramified. In order to excite
curiosity and inspire awe, some were reported to be unexplored; others
had legends. Others had sad stories of truthful tragedies. It was safe
to enter one at low water only, and safe to stay no longer than a few
minutes because of the stalactites. If you wished to see another, and
not stay in its black, chill maw for four hours, you must go on the
top of high water, and stay no more than a good hour. To a third you
might go at any time of tide. To a fourth only on the last of the
lowest of neaps, and then be quick and get away again. To a sixth only
on the top of spring tides. To one, and one only, which might be
entered at any state of tide--Never.
This last cave, which not the boldest fisherman in Kilcash or the next
village to it would face, was called the Whale's Mouth, and ran in
under the Black Rock.
The opening of the Whale's Mouth is on the south-west or extreme
seaward side of the Black Rock. At full of spring tide the entrance to
it is about fifteen feet high and of equal breadth. The difference
between high and low water here is about fifteen feet. Hence, at
lowest of spring tide, the measurement from the surface of the water
to the roof at the entrance would be thirty feet.
At the entrance of the Whale's Mouth the outline of the Black Rock is
blunt, abrupt, solid. The base of the Rock is never uncovered by
water. The wash of the long roller of the Atlantic is always against
its sides. The general formation of the cave is that of a square. It
is more like the hideous distended jaws of the crocodile than of the
whale; but the reason for calling it the Whale's Mouth does not lie in
the immediate entrance, but further on, in the roof of the forbidding
cavern.
For years no one had dared to enter that cavern. Along the coast were
stories of two boats which had ventured in. Not a plank, oar, or man
of the first had ever been seen again. Part of the boat, oars, and
crew of the other had been seen for one brief moment, smashed and
mangled, and then disappeared for ever. What the fate of the former
was no one could tell; what the fate of the latter had been all knew.
As far as could be seen into the cave from the outside, there was
nothing dangerous or remarkable-looking about it. It declined slightly
in height, but the walls did not seem to come any closer together.
There was no rock or obstruction of any kind visible in it. The long,
even swells rolled in unbroken; but after each wave passed out of
sight there was a deep tumultuous explosion, and a strange, loud sound
of rushing and struggling water. There was no weakening or gradual
dispersion of the force of the wave. Its power seemed shattered and
absorbed at once.
This cave had another mysterious and disquieting faculty. It absorbed
and discharged more water than could be accounted for by any other
supposition but that inside somewhere it expanded prodigiously. At
flood tide the water went in eagerly; at ebb tide it ran out at so
quick a rate, many believed a large body of fresh water, or foreign
water of some other kind, found a way into it. On flood tide, the
fishermen gave it a wide berth, lest by any chance or mischance they
might be sucked into it.
Often curious people passing by at flood tide threw overboard articles
that would float, and watched them as they were slowly but surely
drawn into that gaping vault. There was no doubt they were swallowed
by that inky void, but they never were seen by man again. Some of the
simpler people believed that there was a whirlpool at the end of the
cave, and that if this whirlpool took anything down, it never gave
that thing, or sign or token of that thing, back again. People on
these shores attach miraculous powers to whirlpools. There are no
whirlpools of consequence in the neighbourhood, but terrible stories
of them had reached the people, and filled the simple folk with
superstitious awe.
In this shunned and mysterious cell the rock-monster had its home. On
the sea it was harmless. But no one durst enter its haunt, and yet
this was not wholly from fear of the monster, but of the place itself,
with its loud explosions, its unaccountable indraught and outflow, and
the unreturning dead of the two boats. The monster had its home in the
cave; but his sphere of action was on the vast plain of rock above.
O'Hanlon and O'Brien succeeded in crossing the Black Rock without
accident, and were drawing near the Hole.
"It was there," said O'Hanlon, pointing--"just there. I saw him as
plain as ever eyes saw anything."
O'Hanlon pointed to the north-east, or shore side, of the Hole.
The two men drew nearer, and then, pausing a moment to fix their hats
firmly on their heads and grasp one another round the waist, crept
cautiously forward until they stood on the brink of the Hole. They
looked down.
The Hole was almost square, about thirty feet by thirty feet, and
narrowing irregularly as it went down to about half that size. The
depth from where the two stood to the surface of the water below was
thirty-five feet.
The bottom of the Hole was naturally scant of light, and the light now
in the sky was poor and thin.
The sides were almost smooth, and at the bottom of the funnel the
angles a little rounded in. The rock upon which they stood seemed to
be about twenty-five feet thick, and the free space between the bottom
of the rock and the surface of the water ten feet. Thus
the height of the cave at the Hole was at the present time of
tide--half-tide flood--ten feet.
At the bottom of the Hole the water was no longer smooth, even quiet,
but broken and turbid, opaque, and mantled with froth. Every wave that
entered the vestibule of the cave swung the uneasy seething mass
inward, to return in a few seconds on the back-wash. But the froth did
not come back every time; it crept further on, until at the third wave
the froth disappeared inward, to be succeeded by other froth moving at
the same rate.
It made one giddy to look for any length of time. After a few minutes
both men drew back by mutual consent.
"No mortal man could live down there for five minutes," said O'Hanlon,
with a shiver.
"No," said O'Brien, with a laugh, "or ghost either, for that matter.
But, I say, O'Hanlon, what cool and roomy lodging it would afford to
all the Fishery Commissioners in the United Kingdoms!"
"This is no place for joking," said O'Hanlon, uneasily. "Let us get
back. I am sick of this place."
"Wait a minute," said O'Brien. "As this wretched man Fahey was seen
here both in the flesh and the spirit for the last time, let me read
the documents he left in your charge."
He put his hand in his pocket, and read the papers by the fast-fading
light.
"Come on. Take care you don't slip. The papers are simple enough on
the surface, except No. 11. Shall I read it to you?"
"Ay," answered O'Hanlon absently.
It was nothing to him. He was devoting his thoughts to getting safely
over this greasy, clammy, slippery surface.
O'Brien read out slowly:
"'Memorandum.--Rise 15·6 lowest. At lowest minute of lowest forward
with all might undaunted. The foregoing refers to _sculls_. With only
one _skull_ any lowest or any last quarter; but great forward pluck
required for this. In both cases (of course!) left.'
"Well," said O'Brien, "I confess I can't make anything of it. Can
you?"
"No," said the other listlessly.
They had now reached the foot of the path.
"I think it's rubbish. What do you say?"
"Unmitigated rubbish."
"What, for instance, can he mean by 'skull' and 'sculls' with a line
under each? The writing is that of a man of some education."
"Oh, yes--he was a man of some education."
O'Brien paused in his walk, and cried:
"Stop! I think I have an idea."
"Eh?"
"From what you know of this man, do you think he could spell a word of
ordinary English?"
"I should think so."
"Then I _have_ an idea.
"What is it?"
"_Wait_."