AT THE WHALE'S MOUTH.
Red Head is about a pistol-shot from the Black Rock to the east. It is
a tall, perpendicular red cliff, more than a hundred feet high,
projecting from the land a few hundred yards, and rising up sheer out
of deep water. In places it overhangs slightly--in places reclines.
The rocks of which it is formed are in no place angular, show no sharp
fracture, declare no brittleness in formation. They are rounded and
smooth like the human hand, abrupt nowhere, save in their giddy
descent to the water.
The middle of the Head is cleft in two a hundred yards inward. This
cleft is called the Gap, or the Red Gap, and is as wide as the nave of
St. Paul's. At the depth of a hundred yards in the Gap the height of
the opening suddenly grows less, and the mouth of a huge cave is
formed by the precipitous sides, and an irregular, blunted, Gothic
roof of the same firm, smooth red rock. The vast chamber, or system of
chambers, beyond, is the Red Gap Cave, for brevity called the Red
Cave.
At the time appointed, O'Brien and Paulton found Jim Phelan and his
mate Tim Corcoran afloat on the bay by the flat stretch of rocks which
served Kilcash as a landing-stage. Billy Coyne had brought down a
basket of food, some torches, a crimson light, and gun--the torches
and light to illumine the gloom, and the gun to awaken the echoes of
the vast vault.
The day was fair and bright, with chill spring sunshine. Overhead vast
fields of silvery white clouds stretched motionless across the full
azure sky. There was no breath of wind, no threat of rain, no look of
anger anywhere. The waters of the bay moved inward with a silken
ripple that scarcely stirred the yawl as she glided slowly onward.
When she reached the open water beyond the bay, and headed first south
and then east, she met the long, even Atlantic roller, which glided
towards her and under her as silently and gently as a summer's breeze.
No sound broke the plenteous silence but the ripple of the water
against the sides, the snap of the oars in the rowlocks, and the dull
beat of the waves against the foam-footed crags. No ship, no boat, no
bird was in view. The solitude of the air and sea was complete. The
sounds of the sea on the crags seemed not the distant notes of opening
war, but the soft prelude to long, breathless peace.
They rowed in silence until they were close to the Black Rock, until
it rose dark, inhospitable, forbidding above them. Phelan was on the
stroke, Corcoran on the bow oar. The yawl was now abreast the point at
which the Black Rock joined the cliff at the westward. There was no
rudder to the boat. On that coast rudders are looked on as foppery. In
smooth weather the stroke steers from the rowlocks; in a sea-way some
one steers with an additional oar from the sculling notch. O'Brien and
Paulton were aft, but there was no oar in the sculling notch to steer
with.
They were keeping a clean wake, and owing to the swelling out of the
Black Rock they would, if they held on as they were going, pass within
a few score fathoms of the Whale's Mouth. It was now about half flood.
All at once Jim Phelan began to ease without looking over his
shoulder.
"Pull, after oar--ease bow!" sang out O'Brien, quickly.
The bow eased as ordered, but, contrary to the order, the stroke oar
stopped pulling altogether, and Phelan looked up with an angry
expression at O'Brien.
"I said ease bow--pull stroke," said O'Brien, quickly, in a tone of
irritation.
"And I say--stop all," said Phelan, decisively.
Corcoran rested on his oar, and for a few seconds O'Brien and Phelan
sat looking at one another. It was plain O'Brien was angry, and that
Phelan was resolute. Paulton had no key to the difficulty. The clumsy
yawl rose to the top and slid into the trough of two long, slow
rollers before either of the men spoke further.
Jim Phelan peaked his oar and broke silence.
"Mr. O'Brien, I told you I wouldn't, and I won't. That's all."
"You won't what, you stubborn fool?"
O'Brien was hot, but he had not lost his temper.
"I told you," said Phelan, leaning his great body forward, and resting
his hands on his thighs, "as plain as words could be that I'd have
nothing to do with the Whale's Mouth. You may not care about your
life, Mr. O'Brien, but I have people looking to me. You're
independent, and can do what you like; but neither for you nor any
other man will I go nearer than I think safe to the Whale's Mouth. The
Red Gap is bad enough at this time of year; but not at this time of
year or any other will I have anything to do with that cursed hole in
the Black Rock here. Now, sir, am I to put about?"
"I think you're taking leave of your senses, Phelan," said Jerry,
testily. "What on earth put it into your head I wanted to go into the
Whale's Mouth? Why, if I wanted to do anything half so plucky as that,
I'd get a man with a _red_ liver, and a heart as big as a sparrow's!
Give way, I tell you."
An ugly look came into Phelan's face. He was not bad-tempered or
quarrelsome, but he justly had the reputation of being the most daring
and the strongest man in the village. He was not very intelligent, and
this was the first time in his life he had been accused of cowardice.
He felt more amazed than angry, but he felt some anger. He knew he
could, if he chose, catch O'Brien by the feet and throw him over the
gunwale as easily as the oar lying across his legs. For a moment he
thought the cold swim would do O'Brien good, but almost instantly he
saw the punishment would be out of proportion to the offence. He drew
a deep breath, partly straightened himself, and, catching his oar,
said:
"Are we to go on to the Red Gap, sir?"
"Yes, confound you!" said O'Brien, far from amiably. "Keep as close to
the rock as you think is _safe, quite safe_, Phelan. I wouldn't risk
your life for a thousand pounds."
"Thank you, sir," said Phelan, sullenly. "Neither would I--in a cave;
but if it came to anything between man and man----"
"I know," broke in O'Brien, with a laugh, "you'd be glad to risk your
neck to satisfy your anger."
He had suddenly regained his good humour.
"That's it," said Phelan, laconically, as the yawl moved on.
Paulton looked in surprise from one to the other. O'Brien smiled and
shook his head to reassure him, but said nothing. Visibly the spirits
of the little party were damped.
At length they were opposite the much-dreaded Whale's Mouth. The two
rowers, at the request of O'Brien, peaked their oars a few fathoms out
of the direct set of the in-draught, now at its greatest strength.
The wall of rock, in which the opening of the cave appeared, was at
this time of tide almost square, and considerably wider than the yawl
was long. Nothing could be more harmless-looking than the Mouth. Its
sides were smooth and almost perpendicular. No huge mass of rock hung
threateningly on high; the water beneath was pellucid, green, gentle.
No awful sounds issued from that Mouth. The internal sounds told of
little disturbance or danger. No sign of conflict appeared on the
sides of the Mouth or the water, or in the soft olive depths below. In
the heat of summer a stranger would have found it almost impossible to
deny himself the luxurious refreshment of repose in the moist twilight
of that water-cave.
No teeth were visible; but the lithe, subtle, unceasing, undulating
tongue was there--the polished, subtle water. It rose and fell,
seemingly, as the water round it, in indolent, purposeless
indifference; and looking at the water merely, it seemed to make no
greater progress onward than the water outside and around. Yet the
gentle swelling and hollowing of the waves had a purpose underlying,
though they seemed, like other waves, to move tardily, almost
imperceptibly forward. But here the water was dragged onward occultly
by some power, and for some purpose unknown. The roof of the Mouth and
the jaws were powerless for evil. No teeth were visible in this
gigantic Mouth, but the unsuspected, oily, slimy water was there lying
in wait for the unwary, and fatal to all things that touched it.
It was the tongue of the ant-bear that attracts, enfolds, and finally
engulphs its prey in its noisome maw.
"Is that the Whale's Mouth of which you told me, Jerry?" asked Alfred.
"That's it," answered Jerry, shortly. He took up one of the torches
lying on the stern-sheets and threw the torch towards the cave into
the sea.
"It doesn't appear very dreadful now--does it?"
"Watch that torch. No sea looks very terrifying in a calm," said
Jerry, sharply.
He had not yet quite recovered from the passage of arms with Phelan.
The boatman had annoyed him by extravagantly over-estimating the
dangers and powers of the chasm, and Paulton now ruffled him by
seeming to make nothing of them.
Slowly but surely the torch was carried towards the Whale's Mouth.
Slowly at first, but more quickly as it approached the rock, more
quickly as it approached the cave. Second by second the rate
increased, until, when it reached the Mouth and disappeared, it was
hurrying on as fast as a man could walk.
"That's strange!" said Alfred. "I think you told me no one has been
able to find out where all this water goes to."
"To a place that's more hot than comfortable," said Phelan grimly,
directing a look of inquiry towards Jerry.
"It all comes back again," said Jerry.
"Barring what doesn't," muttered Phelan. "Pull a stroke or two, Tim,"
he said to the other boatman. "The current is under her keel already,
and bad as this world is, I haven't made my will yet. A couple of more
strokes, Tim."
He looked at Alfred and addressed him, although he could not do so by
his name, as he had never heard it.
"I beg your pardon, sir; but if you'd like to make money, sir, I'll
lay you the price of this day's work to a brass button you never see
that torch again, and I'll lie by to watch for it until the ebb is
done."
Alfred did not answer. His eyes had been raised for a few moments, and
were now firmly fixed on the plain of the Black Rock. Jerry was
peering intently into the jaws of the Whale's Mouth. Phelan was
looking into Alfred's face to see the effect of his offer.
"Jerry!" cried Alfred, abruptly.
"What?" asked Jerry, without moving his eyes from the cavern.
"There's some one on the Black Rock."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed O'Brien, looking up. "Not Fahey?"
"No," said Alfred. "It's Mrs. Davenport!"