THE CAVE AMONG THE ROCKS
“The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way,
Shining green and silver with the hidden herring-shoal;
But the Little Waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray
And the Little Waves of Breffny go stumbling through my soul.”
EVA GORE-BOOTH.
WALLY ran out upon a point of rock that ended abruptly in a sheer face,
under which the outgoing tide ran swiftly, deep and green. For a moment
he stood motionless, his slim body gleaming white against sea and rock;
then he curved forward and shot into the water in a clean dive that made
scarcely any splash. He reappeared, shaking the water from his eyes, his
brown face glowing.
“Coo-ee, Jim! Come on—it’s ripping!”
Jim appeared from a cave, shedding the last of his raiment. There was no
pause in his dive; his swift rush along the point ended in a leap that
carried him far out, and when he emerged, strong over-arm strokes
carried him quickly in towards a tiny bay where hard yellow sand made a
perfect landing-place. Wally gave chase, unavailingly: when his feet
touched the shore Jim was already racing again along the rocks, his dive
this time beginning with a complete somersault in the air, before, with
a mighty splash, he disappeared once more. Wally came hard upon his
heels, springing in, in a sitting position, his hands locked under his
knees; and for the next twenty minutes the chums sported in the water
like a couple of seals, racing, playing tricks upon each other, and
practising the dozen different dives taught them in schoolboy days in
Australia. Finally they rubbed themselves down with dry, warm sand,
donned their clothes, and subsided, glowing, on a sunny rock, to light
their pipes.
“What a perfect place for a swim!” Jim said, looking at the long, narrow
inlet with its twin headlands. “That point only needs one thing, Wal—a
really good spring-board.”
“Yes. Do you remember the big spring-board in the St. Kilda baths—the
one you broke when you were trying how high you could spring before
diving?”
“Do I not!” said Jim ruefully. “It was the pride of the baths, and
replacing it made me a poor man for the rest of the term!” He pitched a
shell far out into the sea. “Doesn’t that seem ages ago!”
“So it is: anything that happened before the war _is_ ages ago,” Wally
answered. “And I suppose, when we get back to Billabong, all this”—he
swept a comprehensive gesture that included Ireland and Europe—“will
seem a kind of prehistoric dream. Anyhow it’s a good dream while it
lasts.”
“Yes, it’s all too good to have missed it,” Jim said. “Ireland has been
jolly, beyond our hopes, thanks to O’Neill—what a brick that poor chap
is! Now if we can only finish up by a bit of real fighting, it will all
be a huge lark. I’m not a scrap sorry to have been in the trenches; it
was all good experience. But I say, Wal, I do want to get going above
ground!”
“Rather!” Wally answered. “I want to take a hand in a general worry, and
afterwards to be in it when we chase the lovely Hun back to his happy
home. And I specially want to be there when we chase ’em out of
Brussels: I’d like to see that plucky Belgian King marching down his
main street again. Won’t they howl!”
“We’ll all howl when that day comes,” said Jim. “You know, Ireland has
been just topping, and it’s jolly to be with old dad and Norah again;
but I’m beginning to think it’s about time we got back to work. We’re
fit as possible now; and we didn’t sign on to play about. This sort of
thing”—he touched his rough tweed clothes—“was all very well when we
were crocks. But we aren’t crocks now. I think, of course, that it was
only common sense to get quite fit; they don’t want half-cured people
over yonder. Still——”
“Still, being cured, it’s time we dug out our khaki again,” Wally said,
nodding. “I quite agree: one would begin to feel a shirker if one stayed
much longer. And Australians haven’t shown themselves shirkers in this
war.”
“No. It’s funny, you know,” Jim reflected. “I did hate the trenches—the
filth, and the flies, and the smells, and the vermin; and I used to
wonder if I was a tin-soldier, and had no business to have come at all,
because lots of chaps say they love it, no matter what the conditions
are. Well, I didn’t love it; I’d sooner have driven bullocks, any day.”
“Same here,” said Wally.
“It used to buck me that you felt the same,” Jim said, “because of
course I knew you weren’t any tin-soldier, and the other fellows used to
say how keen you were, and that you’d get on well.”
“But they said just the same to me about you, you old ass!” said Wally
laughing. “Who got a special pat on the back at the last inspection, I’d
like to know?”
“Oh, that was only luck,” said Jim, much embarrassed. “Bit of eye-wash
for the C.O. Anyway, I used to worry for fear I wasn’t any good at the
game; and it worried me that I was so awfully glad to come away, after
they gassed us. But lately, I’ve been a bit bucked, because I’m getting
no end keen to be back. We’ll hate it again, I’m certain. But one has
got to see the job through. You feel it too, don’t you?”
“’M,” nodded Wally. “I suppose it’s just the beastliness one hates, but
one likes one’s job.”
“I expect so. I used to get horribly annoyed with young Wilson, in my
platoon, but I’d like uncommonly to know how the little beggar is
shaping now, and who has the handling of him. He’s a queer-tempered,
obstinate, cross-grained varmint, but he’ll do anything for you if you
treat him like a human being. Only you can’t drive him. I hope we’ll get
our old crowds back—though I’m afraid it’s rather too much to hope
for.”
“I’m afraid so,” Wally agreed. “My corporal was a dear old thing; only
he would persist periodically in forgetting that I was grown-up. I don’t
blame them—the old N.C.O.’s know ever so much more than we do. That
chap had been all over the world, and seen no end of service; he’d have
had a commission if he could have kept off beer. It was when he was
drunk that he used to think I was his small boy. I had my own troubles
with him”—and Wally grinned reminiscently.
“They were such a good lot of fellows,” Jim said. “Oh, it will be pretty
good to get back; and to see Anstruther and Garrett and Blake, and all
the crowd again, and make them fight their battles over for us. It’s one
of the annoying parts about our dose of gas that I haven’t the slightest
recollection of our own little scrap. I used to remember the beginning;
but now my only memory is of you sitting on a biscuit-tin eating bully,
and I’m sure that happened before the fun began. I wonder if the other
fellows will have much to talk about?”
“Well, _we_ won’t, anyhow,” Wally said. “Ireland isn’t the place for
adventures. Let’s hope we may get some good specimens of our own in
Flanders—and in Germany—and then we needn’t envy any of ’em.”
“Rather!” assented Jim. “I say, suppose we move on—the sun isn’t as hot
as it was, or I’m colder than I was; and anyhow, we may as well
explore.” He sprang up, followed by his chum, and they strolled across
the rocks.
The party had been at Carrignarone for three days, and there was, as
yet, no word from Con, who had departed on an outside car, _en route_ to
Belfast, to obtain what was necessary to restore the motor to health.
Not that anyone minded the delay. The little inn was clean and
well-kept; the sea-fishing was good, and the bathing perfect; while the
shore, with its alternating strand and rock, was a never-failing
fascination. Wally and Jim had made friends with an old fisherman, who
had taken them out with him very early that morning; and luck had been
so good that they had come in some hours earlier than they were
expected, so that the big haul they brought could be taken to the
railway and landed in Dublin in time for the next morning’s market. At
the inn, they found that Sir John, Norah, and Mr. Linton had gone out,
leaving no word of their movements; so the boys, after an enormous
lunch, had departed to explore the shore farther than their previous
walks had led them, until the long narrow inlet had tempted them to
bathe.
They strolled round the beach from the point where they had dived, now
and then picking up a curious shell or some sea-treasure that might be
included in the parcels that went periodically to Billabong, where
Brownie would have cherished the veriest rubbish if only her nurslings
had gathered it for her. The tide was almost out, and at the farther
headland the rocks lay uncovered for a long way, full of alluring
rock-pools, gleaming with sea-anemones. It was impossible to round the
point, however, for it was higher than the other headland, and the water
roared at its base, even at low tide; so they strolled back across the
rocks, looking for the nearest place where it would be possible to climb
up and cross the point.
The crags above them grew more accessible presently, and they scrambled
up, slipping and clambering until they found themselves on a jutting
rock with a wide flat surface, which, bathed in sunshine, invited them
to stop and rest. Loose fragments of rock lay about the flat top, and
Wally perched on one, but rose hastily.
“That thing wriggled under me,” he said, “It’s just on the balance: I
believe I could push it over.”
“‘That Master Wally have the mischieviousness of ten boys,’ as Brownie
used to say,” Jim remarked, lazily. “Sit down, and don’t play tricks
with the landscape.”
“It would be considerably like hard work, so I don’t think I will,” said
Wally, sitting down on another fragment. “This old table of a rock wants
tidying up, I think—did you ever see so many loose chunks scattered
about?”
“I expect a bit of the cliff fell on it from above, and flew into bits,”
said Jim. “Anyhow, it’s warm and jolly. What’s that?”
Something tinkled on the rock, and Wally uttered a sharp exclamation of
annoyance.
“Botheration! That’s my knife.”
“Hard luck!” said Jim, looking at a cleft in the surface, down which the
knife had vanished. “Never mind; I’ve got two with me, and you can have
one.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to lose that fellow,” Wally said, vexedly.
“It’s that extra-special knife Norah gave me when I was going out—the
big one she called ‘the lethal weapon.’ It’s full of all sorts of
dodges. I’d sooner lose a lot of odd things than that knife.”
He lay flat, and put his eye to the cleft in the rock, peering
downwards.
“Afraid it’s gone for good, old man,” Jim said. “It’s hard luck—but
Norah will understand. She’ll probably jump at the chance of giving you
another.”
“I want this one,” said Wally, his voice slightly muffled. He peered
harder. “I say, Jim, I can see daylight down here.”
“I don’t see how you can,” Jim said, leaning over in his turn. “This old
rock seems pretty solid. Let’s look.” He applied his eye to the cleft,
in his turn.
“Well, there is light,” he said presently, sitting up. “I wonder if
there’s some opening below, Wal?”
“Don’t know, but I’m going to see,” Wally answered. He swung himself
over the edge of the flat rock and climbed down, followed by his chum.
They hunted about the great pile, seeking for some opening that might
explain the glimmer of daylight that had greeted them above.
On one side of the mass was the long stretch of rock from which they had
first climbed up; but on the other they found smooth hard sand, only
lately under water. There were openings here and there among the
boulders, but they led to nothing, and had no communication with the
upper air; they explored them in turn, but found no solution of the
problem. Then, as Wally was backing out on hands and knees from one of
these false scents, he heard a low whistle from Jim, and hurried round a
boulder, to find him regarding what looked like a slit, about three feet
high, between two masses of rock.
“There’s some sort of a cave in there,” Jim said. “I’ve been in a little
way, and it looks rather interesting, so I came back for you. There’s
light far above one’s head; I believe we’ll find your knife there.”
They crawled into the narrow passage. Almost immediately it turned, so
sharply that a casual searcher might easily have been misled into
thinking it ended: and then it widened and they found themselves in a
long, narrow cave. They could see no roof; but far above, a faint bar of
light glimmered, and made it possible to see where they were going.
Underfoot was hard sand. The walls were dripping with wet and encrusted
with seaweeds and limpets.
“This is a real sea-cave,” Wally said cheerfully.
An echo took his voice and went muttering round the rocks, the mutter
rising at length almost to a cry. It was an eerie sound, in the wet dusk
of the cave, with the dark smell of a submerged place in their nostrils;
and the boys jumped.
“I guess this isn’t a place to raise one’s voice in,” Wally said,
dropping his to a whisper. “That’s a nice, tame echo; I’d like to take
it back to Billabong!”
“Would you!” uttered Jim, with feeling. “The blacks would say it was the
Bunyip come back; and anyhow, you’d get into trouble for bringing out a
prohibited immigrant.” He made a quick pounce on an object that
glittered faintly on the sand. “There’s your knife, old man!”
“Bless you!” said Wally, thankfully receiving his property. “I say, what
luck! and haven’t you the eye of a hawk?”
“Why, I kicked it,” said Jim. “A good thing it’s so big: I always
thought Norah gave it to you with the idea that you might club a few
Germans with it, if you got the chance—and scalp ’em afterwards. Get
out!—” as Wally tipped his cap off. “Remember that you’re in a
subterranean locality, and behave as such. Hark at that echo!”
He had raised his voice, unwittingly, and the echo had sent it shrieking
round the cave. It was quite a relief when the sound died away to a low
murmur.
“I’m not at all sure that it isn’t the Bunyip, an’ he livin’ here at his
aise, as Con would say,” Wally muttered. “Come on; we’ll see how far
this place goes.”
The light grew dimmer as they moved on, away from the crack overhead.
Fortunately, Jim was never to be found without a tiny electric torch in
his pocket, and its little beam of light was sufficiently to guide them.
But for the torch their explorations would certainly have come to an end
immediately, for it was not half a minute before they found themselves
against a wall that apparently ended the cave.
“Well, it isn’t much of a cavern, after all,” Jim remarked. “Not bad as
a dressing-room for Norah, if she wants to bathe from this
beach—there’s clear sand right down to the water from the entrance in
one place. She will have to come at low tide, though.”
He flashed his torch into the comers as they turned to retrace their
steps. One was plainly nothing but solid wall: but in the other
something caught his eye; a darker patch of shadow that was not quite
like the rock.
“Why, I believe there’s an opening in that corner,” he said. “It must be
another cave, communicating with this one. Come and see.”
The opening was only wide enough to admit one at a time, and so screened
by a jutting boulder that it was almost invisible. Within was a cave
very like the first one, though much larger; differing from it, too, in
that the sand ended, and the floor was of fairly smooth rock, which, in
the middle, held a great pool of water. This time there was no doubt
that they were at the end of their subterranean journey; Jim flashed the
light right round the wall, but there was no break in the solid rock,
glistening with wet.
“Well, that’s the finish,” Wally said. “It isn’t a wildly exciting
place, except for that demoniacal echo. We’ll bring Norah and the others
here and make it talk. I’d like to hear what its little efforts would be
like if one gave a football yell!”
“Something would break,” said Jim, suppressing a laugh. He strolled
across to the pool, and turned the light on its black surface.
“That is a deep and mysterious and probably, haunted water-hole and
you’d better be careful,” said Wally in a sepulchral whisper. “Most
likely the Bunyip lives there, and in a moment we shall see his grisly
head emerge from the unfathomed depths, and then all will be over with
two promising young officers of His Majesty’s Army.” He paused for
breath.
“Idiot!” said Jim, pleasantly. “I wonder if it’s deep. Lend me your
stick, Wal.”
He leaned over the pool and thrust the stick into its depths. It went in
for its full length. Then came a sound which made the boys look at each
other in bewilderment.
“It sounds as if the Bunyip had been chucking his old tins in,” Wally
said.
“It’s tin, I’ll swear,” Jim answered. “And solid at that; I can’t move
it.”
He took off his coat, rolled his shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, and
recommenced investigations. It was easy enough to feel the stick
scraping on tin; beyond that, he could make out nothing, save that there
was plenty of tin to scrape. Jim desisted at length, and stood
pondering.
“I think this is pretty queer,” he said, presently. “Wonder if we’ve
stumbled on a smuggler’s cave, Wal. Look here, I’m going to paddle.”
“Well, you don’t know the depth of that beastly place,” Wally said. “For
all we know it may be miles deep.”
“Well, can’t I swim?” Jim queried in amazement.
“Yes, a little. Anyhow, I’m coming, too.”
Jim laughed softly.
“I thought that was it,” he said. “Look here—you stay at the edge with
the light, and I’ll hold one end of the stick, and you can hang on to
the other. That will make it all right. There’s no sense in out both
paddling in.”
Wally assented, more or less reluctantly; and Jim took off his boots and
stockings and rolled his trouser-legs high. Then, he stepped carefully
into the black pool.
“By Jove, it’s cold!” he said.
“What’s the bottom like?”
“Fairly smooth.” He moved on, becoming less cautious. Then he uttered an
exclamation.
“What’s up?” came from Wally.
“I’ve stubbed my silly toe against something—my own fault.” Jim
answered. “Why, it’s another tin!”
He stooped, feeling in the water. Presently he let go of the stick, and
plunged both hands in: and in a moment turned, carrying something that
was evidently heavy. He put it on the rock at the edge of the pool, and
stepped out of the water. Wally flashed the light on the treasure-trove,
and then whistled softly.
“Petrol!”
Jim nodded.
“The pool is full of it, I believe: I felt lots of other tins.” He
turned the big square can over and over, finding no mark upon it. “H’m.
Now I’m going to put it back.”
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
“Because I don’t know whom we have to deal with,” Jim said. He waded in
again and replaced the heavy tin, returning quickly, and picking up his
boots and stockings.
“Slip out and reconnoitre, carefully,” he said. “Take care that you
aren’t seen. Find out if anyone is in sight.”
Wally returned in a few minutes.
“Not a soul,” he reported. “And there’s not a footmark visible on the
sand, except our own.”
“That’s good, anyhow,” Jim said. “We’ll get out of this.”
He led the way out, not speaking until they were clear of the rocks near
the cave. Then he sat down, and for the first time the two boys looked
at each other. Their faces were grave.
“It’s submarines, of course?” Wally asked. “Germans?”
“Couldn’t be anything else. And what a depôt! Look at this inlet—shut
in by the headlands, with a perfect sandy bottom: a submarine could come
in here and lie in complete safety, and no one would ever dream of
looking for her. The cave is not five minutes from the water’s edge,
even at low tide—of course, no one could get in to it at all unless the
tide were right out: when it is in there’s a foot of water over the
entrance.”
“Yes—and at low tide the sand is as hard as iron,” Wally said,
excitedly. “They could fill their collapsible boat with petrol tins in
ten minutes with two or three men to fish them out of the water and a
few more to carry them down. Oh, Jimmy, we’ve got to bag them!”
“Rather!” Jim answered. “The question is, how?”
He thought deeply.
“We must be awfully careful,” he said, at last.
“It’s much too big and important for us to mess up by trying to keep it
to ourselves. But there isn’t a policeman in the district, and if there
were, he might mess it up as badly as ourselves. We’ve got to get a
patrol-boat round to the inlet somehow; you know they’re all round the
coast, and it wouldn’t take long to bring one here. But one doesn’t know
whom to trust. The Germans may be getting help from on shore, for all we
can tell.”
“Of course they may,” Wally cried. “People say there are plenty of
pro-Germans about; and they’d pay well enough to tempt these peasantry.
But all the people we’ve talked to in Carrignarone seem just as keen as
we are about the war. I don’t believe they’re in it.”
“Neither do I, but it’s hard to tell,” Jim answered. “Oh, it’s
maddening!—the brutes may come in to-night, for all we know! We can
telegraph to the nearest coastguard station, of course, or wherever one
can catch a patrol-boat—there are some sort of instructions about
submarines and aeroplanes posted up in every post-office. But she might
not be in time.”
“I suppose we can trust the postmistress?”
“If we can’t, we’re done,” Jim said. “If only the motor were all right
we needn’t trust anyone. Isn’t it simply sickening to think we may do
the wrong thing altogether? And if we make a mistake, and the submarine
gets away with a fresh supply of petrol, she may sink half a dozen
_Lusitanias_ before she is caught!”
“We’ve just got to get her,” Wally said, between his teeth. “It seems to
me there’s only one thing to do: we must telegraph for the patrol-boat,
and, meanwhile, watch every night at low tide. It’s a comfort that they
can’t get into the cave at any other time, isn’t it? I say, Jim, your
father said we were kids to bring our revolvers with us—but isn’t it a
mercy we did!”
“Rather!” Jim said. The revolvers had been new toys; they had not felt
able to part from them. “And O’Neill has one, too—you remember, he said
we might have some shooting-practice in these lonely parts and teach
Norah how to use one.” He became silent, suddenly, and Wally, watching
his thoughtful face, did not interrupt him. After a while he spoke,
half-apologetically.
“I say, Wal, old chap.”
“Yes?”
“Look here,” Jim said. “It’s your show as much as mine, of course, and I
won’t do anything to which you don’t agree. But——” he stopped again.
“Oh, do go on!” said Wally. “Say it!”
“Well, it’s just this. We’ll get lots of shows later on, if we’ve any
luck: not so important as this, perhaps, but still, there ought to be
chances. Anyhow, we’re able to go out to the Front and do our bit. And
that poor chap isn’t.”
“O’Neill?” Wally said. “No.”
“Well—do you see what I mean?”
“It takes brains,” said Wally, laughing. “But I think I do. You want to
make this his show?”
Jim nodded.
“It wouldn’t hurt us,” he said. “He is such a brick, and he’s eating his
heart out over the whole thing. It’s just the toughest sort of luck—and
here he is, knocking about with us and giving us a ripping time, and
you’d think that every time he looks at us it must remind him of what he
wants to have and can’t. And now here’s a thing he could be right in.”
“Rather!” Wally said. “I’m jolly glad you thought of it, old man. And it
isn’t any beautiful sacrifice on our parts, either, for he has tons more
brains than we have, and he’s a first-class shot. Let’s get him to run
it altogether, and we’ll be his subalterns.”
Jim sighed with relief.
“It seemed a bit hard to ask you to give up the credit,” he said.
“And what about you?” grinned Wally
“Oh, credit be hanged!” said Jim, laughing. “Anyhow, we’ll get all the
fun!”
[Illustration: “Wally flashed the light on the treasure-trove, and then
whistled softly.”]
_Jim and Wally_] [_Page_ 225