DAYLIGHT AT LAST.
How that night passed, or whether it was night or day, I cannot say.
Worn out, I must have fallen asleep over my work; and when I awoke,
George was shaking my arm and informing me that he had crawled through
the hole and found the passage free on the other side. I seemed to be
burning hot now; there was a singing in my head, and as I rose to my
feet I staggered and almost fell. How many hours George had been at
work I had no idea. My notions of time were getting hazy and
uncertain; I felt that we had lived in that dark, windy passage for
ages.
The hole had been enlarged just sufficiently to admit of our crawling
through. The fall of earth did not extend many yards, and beyond it we
found ourselves in the continuation of the tunnel. On, on, on we went,
moving slowly, with only the uncertain light of the tiny lamp to warn
us of any dangerous pitfall which might lie in our path. Contrary to
my expectation, we encountered no further obstacle of a similar kind to
that through which we had just cut our way. Now we were passing once
more through solid rock, and now the tunnel was continued through
earth, supported by rough-hewn beams, black with damp and age. Owing
to our slow progress, the distance seemed much longer than it no doubt
really was; the path sloped upward with a gentle gradient all the way,
and so long did the ascent appear that at almost every step I wondered
that we did not arrive at the surface of the ground on a level with the
top of the cliffs. The passage made no turns, and we were evidently
striking straight inland. The air still kept fresh, and even at this
distance from the cave we could feel the upward blast of air as the big
seas entered the cavern.
I staggered along like one in a dream, sometimes steadying myself with
my hands as I lurched up against rock or beam; then all at once George,
who was going on a pace or two in front, started back so quickly that
he trod on my toes, and nearly knocked me down. At the same moment the
lamp fell from his hand, and we were once more in a darkness that could
be felt.
I heard it myself that time! Out of the inky blackness, from the
direction in which we were going, there came a most unearthly sound,
half human, half the note of some strange instrument made and played
upon by underground goblins of old country folk's tales. It rose to
almost a shriek at its loudest pitch, and then died away into a sort of
crooning growl. So weird and terrifying was it in that subterranean
region, that, though past caring for most things, whether good or ill,
I felt the hair bristle on my head.
Woodley was a brave man, as I had reason to know, but I felt his arm
shaking as I clutched it with my hand.
"Hullo!--hullo, there!" he cried, in a hoarse, quavering voice which no
friend of his could have recognized. "Who are you, and what are you
doing?"
Once more there was no reply. Another few moments of that suspense,
and I verily believe I should have turned and rushed back along the way
we had come, regardless whether I ended up by pitching head first down
the shaft into the cavern beneath. Fortunately, George possessed a
large stock of that dogged resolution peculiar to a Briton, which
desperate circumstances tend only to harden; and now, recovering from
the shock which the sound had given him, I believe he was ready to deal
with a whole churchyardful of ghosts.
"Strike a light, Master Eden," he said shortly, "and I'll find the
lamp."
Owing partly to the fright, and partly to my dazed condition, I struck
a good many blows with the steel before I had a spark glowing in the
tinder. In the meantime Woodley had recovered the lamp, and
replenished the oil which had been spilt by pouring out a fresh supply
from the bottle in his pocket. Just as we got the wick to burn,
another weird, high-pitched howl rang through the darkness, continued
for perhaps half a minute, and then ceased; but this time George
remained undaunted.
"You carry the lamp, sir," he said. "Hold it well up, and I'll go in
front."
He took something from his pocket, and I knew from the sharp click that
he had cocked the pistol.
What we expected to see it would be hard to say. Certainly not the
obstacle which, a few paces further on, we found blocking our path.
This was nothing more or less than a heavy wooden door, dark with age
like the beams of the tunnel, and studded with rusty iron nails. We
stopped, and stood staring at it in the faint glimmer of our feeble
lamp. What, then, could have become of the creature--goblin or
human--that had terrified us with its unearthly music? Could it have
retreated before our advance, and be now lying in wait for us behind
that mass of ancient timber?
Woodley was the first to move. He walked up to the door, tried it with
his shoulder, and finding it fast, rapped on it with his knuckles, as
though he expected some ghostly porter to answer his summons.
Again we stood, waiting and listening; then, just as I was about to
speak, a gust of air came sweeping down the passage, causing our lamp
to flicker, and the ghostly music burst out again close to where we
stood, as though the goblin minstrel were piping defiance at us from
the farther side of the door. I grabbed Woodley by the arm; but to my
surprise the man burst into a roar of laughter, which mingled strangely
with the weird howl that rose and fell in total disregard of this
audacious interruption.
"Ho, ho!" laughed George. "To think that we should have been scared by
that! Bless me, nothing but the wind blowing through a keyhole!"
A moment's examination proved his statement to be correct. The gusts
of air driven along the tunnel transformed the wide, old-fashioned
keyhole into a sort of musical instrument; something in the formation
of the lock must, I think, have lent itself to producing an unusually
strange effect as the wind hummed and whistled through the hole. Here,
at all events, was an explanation to the mystery; but in my case the
sudden relaxing of overstrung nerves made me little inclined to join in
my companion's laugh. I leaned up against the side of the passage,
gasping for breath, while the throbbing of my heart seemed to hammer
through my whole frame.
By the time I had somewhat recovered from the reaction caused by our
discovery, George had carefully examined the door. It was fast and
firm as a rock, though on one side, where the ponderous framework
seemed to have shrunk or sunk, there were chinks into which I could
have inserted the end of my finger; through these, too, the stronger
gusts of air sighed and hummed as though in accompaniment to the whoop
and wail of the keyhole.
"It's the lock that holds it," said George, returning to my hands the
lamp which he had borrowed to aid him in his investigations. "If we
could find one of these beams or uprights loose, and use it as a
battering-ram, we might soon burst it open."
What the object of a door in such a place could be we had no notion,
nor, I believe, did we trouble to think. What concerned us was that it
stood between us and our hopes of liberty; and having no tool with
which to pick the lock, we must employ our remaining strength in an
attempt to make it yield to force.
To this end we retraced our steps some distance along the passage; but
the heavy blocks of timber were too firmly fixed to admit of our
wrenching them from their places. In vain did we search for a lump of
rock sufficiently large and heavy to answer the same purpose; the only
loose piece we could find was about the size of a man's boot, and we
might have continued to fling this at the door for a whole week without
achieving any further result than dinting the oak.
"Master Eden," said George, turning to me as though a sudden thought
had come into his mind, "I've got a key here I fancy will fit that
lock," and he made a sign indicating the pistol in his hand. "I've
heard of its being done," he continued, "and I don't see why it
shouldn't act in this case. I'll extract the ball, put the end of the
muzzle to the keyhole, and blow the lock clean off the inside of the
door. The powder's dry, and I don't doubt but what it'll explode."
"You'll hurt your hand," I said.
"I'll chance that," he replied. "I'll use my left. Now, sir, you hold
the lamp, and stand clear when I fire."
With the corkscrew belonging to his knife Woodley was able to draw the
wad from the short-barrelled pistol, and so remove the ball; then
standing at arm's-length from the door, he took the weapon in his left
hand and signalled to me to go farther back. The next instant there
was a blinding flash, and a report which, in that confined space,
sounded like the discharge of a small cannon. Woodley staggered back,
and his arm dropped to his side. It was not for some moments that I
was able to ascertain whether or not he was seriously injured; then it
turned out that the recoil of the firearm, discharged with its muzzle
so close to the door, had dislocated his wrist.
We pressed forward through the cloud of pungent smoke, and to our
delight found that the door was no longer able to resist our united
efforts to shove it open; indeed, when we had time to examine it more
closely, we found that the lock had been blown away on the inside. We
crossed the threshold eagerly enough, but the next moment whatever
hopes had risen in our minds of finding ourselves on the point of
stepping out into the blessed fresh air and light of day were dashed to
the ground. We had certainly arrived at the end of our journey, but
only to find that the long tunnel had apparently no outlet, and
terminated in a small underground cell, of which the walls and roof
even were of stone. As the dim light of our lamp revealed this
unwelcome truth, I felt that at last our fate was finally sealed, that
I could make no further effort, and that here I must lie down and die.
Listlessly I stood by George's side and looked round. The little
chamber in which we stood was the same height as the tunnel, and, I
should say, as regards length and breadth not more than five feet
square. It contained nothing but a three-legged wooden stool, and an
ancient box or coffer, apparently of iron, secured with a heavy
padlock. The walls, as I have said, were of roughly-hewn stone, and
the roof was formed of two slabs of granite. Dimly I wondered to what
purpose such a place could ever have been put--whether some hermit had
dwelt there in a bygone age, and why such a long tunnel had been
excavated for no further purpose than to end in a tiny vault which
seemingly, to all intents and purposes, might have been constructed
immediately above the cave. These thoughts drifted languidly through
my fevered brain; the reaction after a brief period of excitement was
beginning to tell, and I was fast coming to the end of my powers of
endurance.
"What's this, I wonder?" exclaimed George, giving the iron box a kick.
"Some old pirate's treasure, maybe. Well, if 'twas full of gold it's
no good to us at present, nor likely to be unless we can find a way out
of this vault. Set down the light a moment, Master Eden," he
continued. "I'll hoist you up on my back, sir, and you can see if you
can stir either of them stone slabs overhead."
Feeble as I was, I doubt whether I could have moved the stone if it had
offered no other resistance than its own weight; as it was, for all the
effect my pushing had there might have been ten thousand tons of earth
resting on its upper surface. As Woodley once more set me on my feet I
turned giddy, and sank down on the iron box to save myself from
falling. The dimly-lit vault spun round and round; I leaned my head
against the cold stone and closed my eyes. Whether I fainted or merely
dozed off from sheer exhaustion I can't say, but after what seemed an
age I was roused by Woodley shaking my shoulder and addressing me in
loud and excited tones. His words had to be repeated several times
before I grasped their meaning; then at last they forced themselves
into my brain.
"Master Eden, I've heard a dog barking! There 'tis again! Liven up,
sir; we can't be far from help."
For a moment I seemed to recover full possession of my senses; my brain
was feverishly active as a sudden inspiration came to my mind--the
weird song of the wind through the keyhole, the long uphill slope of
the passage, the barking of the dog.
"George," I cried, "I know where we are! We're in the secret place at
Coverthorne! We must be close to the haunted room, perhaps directly
under it; and the wind was the ghost!" I broke out into a fit of wild
hysterical laughter, and ended by bursting into tears.
"Steady, steady, sir," cried George. "What d'you mean? What are you
talking about?"
With an effort recovering my self-possession, I told him in a few words
what I meant, and how I believed we had unwittingly discovered the old
house's secret chamber.
"But what can we do?" I exclaimed. "We may stay buried here for any
length of time, and no one know where we are or how to get us out."
Woodley was certainly a man of quick resource. He stood thinking for a
moment; then picking up the lamp, he carried it out into the tunnel,
and returning closed the door. Standing in the pitch darkness, we saw
for the first time a faint gray shadow as it were, but a few inches
long, which filtered through between one granite slab and the end wall
of the cell. Faint and indistinct it might be, but at the sight of it
our hearts leaped within us: this was daylight at last!
"Hurrah!" shouted George. "Yonder's the way out? Now I'll soon have
some one to open the door for us, or may I never ride behind four
horses again!"
He brought back the lamp, and then commenced to yell at the top of his
voice, varying this proceeding by hurling the wooden stool up against
the slabs overhead, which, in spite of the injury to his left arm, he
continued doing till every leg was smashed and only the seat remained.
"Yo-ho!" he shouted. "The dog's heard me; he's barking like mad.
Yo-ho! help here--help!"
I made some feeble attempt to contribute to the uproar, but my voice
seemed suddenly to have failed me, and my cheer was nothing but a
croak. Strange noises were ringing in my ears, and a shower of sparks
danced before my eyes.
How long this continued I could not have told, but at length there was
a muffled, "Who are you down there?" and more shouting on the part of
George. Then I became aware of the fact that Woodley was hugging me in
his arms, laughing and crying, and assuring me that we were saved.
Straightway I found myself mounted with him on the back seat of a
coach. We were tearing along at breakneck speed in the twilight of a
winter afternoon; there was a great roaring in the air, which drowned
even the rattle of the wheels, and looking round I was horrified to see
following us a great onrushing wall of water, as though the sea had
overflowed the land. Faster and faster became our wild gallop, but the
huge line of breakers was gaining on us every moment; now we were
overtaken, and a great wave was rearing its head above us to sweep us
to destruction. I heard a muffled voice shout, "Stand from under!"
There was a crash, a blaze of light, and I became unconscious.
Long after, whole centuries later it might have been, I became aware of
the fact that I was staring upward at some oblong patch of light.
Slowly this resolved itself into an opening in the roof of the passage,
and I realized that two men and a boy were staring down at me in mute
astonishment. Then, as my dizzy brain grew clear for a moment, I
recognized the last named as Miles Coverthorne.
Once more the roar of a troubled sea was in my ears; I had a horrible
idea that I had been thrust down into a vault and should be buried
alive. I made one last frantic effort to retain my failing senses.
"Miles," I cried pitifully, "take me out! Don't let them bury me! I'm
Sylvester Eden!"
I could not hear his reply, but saw him move his head and hand, and the
next moment I had been whirled away once more into darkness beyond even
the land of dreams.