THE HAUNTED CAVE
A sunlit sheet of sea, violet and azure, clothed in slender cloud
shadows and heaving gently to the long Atlantic ground-swell. Up
through the calm water, to meet the eye of the gazer, came the green
clearness of stone, and blinks of unveined sand showing white between
the brown tangled blades of the great oar-weed; and you might see a
school of little cuddies, heads all one way, playing hide and seek in
the sea forest, and caring no whit for the clumsy armored crab beneath
them, who crawled sideways, a laborious patch of color in the
shimmering transparency. Up out of the deep water the gray rocks rose
clear and fine, a mass of platforms and pinnacles, roughened with
barnacles and tufted with dulse, whose crimson leaves floated and
swung in the white foam of the lisping swell; and above the rocks and
beyond the sea's reach the cliff stood up black, showing all the
strata that had gone to the making of it outlined with little patches
of coarse grass. On one such patch grazed without concern a sheep
which had slipped over, happy in her ignorance of the fact that she
could never be drawn up again alive; the wiser raven overhead was
clanging away with short barks to tell his mate. On a ridge on the
cliff side sat a pair of young scarfs, almost invisible save when they
twisted their long necks about like two snakes, trying to make up
their minds to follow their mother, who had just flopped clumsily into
the water, feet first, and had turned there and then into a miracle of
easy grace, as she used her head to dash the spray over her back. Out
at sea a solan rose steadily in a sweeping spiral, the white and black
of him glittering in the sun; suddenly he checked, reversed engines,
and fell plump like an inverted cross, his long raking wings clapping
to as he struck the water; a moment, and he was up, and there sat,
choking and gobbling over his fish, ere he rose again in his majestic
rings.
The two children had grounded their boat on a little pebble beach
between the rocks, and were sitting on a big tuft of sea pinks,
munching handfuls of the sweet dulse and watching the solan at his
fishing. They were by way of fishing themselves, but the afternoon was
as yet too early and too clear for them. The Urchin had a pile of
stones beside him, and was apparently trying to see how many times in
twenty he could miss a large and obvious spur of rock. Fiona had a
book of poetry, and was making intermittent efforts to read; but the
world was too full of things to give poetry a fair chance.
The Urchin threw his last stone away.
"Silly sitting here," he said; "come and explore."
So, scrambling and sliding, the two made their way across the rocks,
stopping at every rock pool to raise its fringe of weed with careful
hands and investigate the wonder of the little world below; sea
flowers of every hue, white and green, gray and orange, purple and
white and gray and purple again, some smooth and satisfied, others
with tentacles greedily awash, that could be induced to suck at a
small finger dexterously inserted; sea shells of every contour, some
living and clutching at the rock, some cast off and dead, others again
protruding alien claws, resurrected to a life of artificial movement
by the little hermit crabs whose tails they sheltered; here and there
the spiky pink globe of a sea urchin, waiting for the tide to float
him off. And in one deep little pot, with sides green like a grotto of
ferns, they found a miniature battle. A small green crab, who had cast
his shell, sat humped in a recess of the grotto, a thing soft and
vulnerable, a delight to the enemy; and in front of him, excited and
transparent, were half a dozen shrimps, the horn on each forehead
pointed at him; from time to time some young gallant would dash in to
prod the helpless monster, and at once backwater again into the ranks
of his friends. The crab bore his torment with a patience born of the
knowledge that each minute his new carapace was hardening; the shrimps
had no wit to count the cost, or reckon the odds that the rising tide
might bear them away in safety from the day of vengeance.
On hands and knees, not daring to breathe on the limpid surface of the
pool, the children watched the little drama. From the cliff top the
heated air rose dancing into the sky. So still were earth and air and
sea that the old finner's rise sounded as though the cliff were
falling. He had worked nearer in to the rocks than seemed possible for
his ninety feet of blubber and muscle, and as his black side rolled
over, the water about him boiled like a pot; but he did not splash,
for he had been well brought up and always knew what his tail was
doing, though it was so far away.
"Shiver these rocks," he began in a rage, as he flung two fountains
out of his nose. Then he caught sight of Fiona and the gleam of the
red bracelet.
"Oh my fins and flippers!" he spouted. "I ask pardon, young lady; I
haven't the manners of a grampus. And they told me about you."
"Who's they?" asked Fiona, ungrammatically.
"Friends at Court, friends at Court," said the finner. "What a thing
to have. 'No need of the old sailorman,' said I. But they said I must
go. And I've scraped the barnacles off my precious tail. Will it run
to some tobacco?"
"Will what run?" said the girl. "Your tail? What is it you want?"
"Hints are wasted, I see," said the whale. "'One question,' said I.
Only one. But magic is magic, you know, even for a tough old
sailorman. Come now, one question. I'm too far inshore for my
liking."
Fiona understood.
"Is it about my treasure?" she said.
"Yours, or that boy's there, whichever you like," said the whale. "But
only one, only one."
For about two seconds Fiona did some hard mental drill. Then she said:
"Will you please tell me where the Urchin can find his treasure?"
"You do have luck," said the finner. "Think of it, then. O you little
fishes, think of it. If you'd asked the other, I didn't know the
answer. Wouldn't have got an answer, and my tail all scraped for
nothing. And this one, my great-great-grandmother saw it all, and
nobody knows here but me and the seals and one man, and he's too fat
to count. West cave, Scargill Island; and bring you luck, my dear.
Will it run to some tobacco?"
"Thank you so much," said Fiona politely. "And I'm sorry I haven't any
tobacco with me. But if you could wait a few minutes . . ."
"Shiver it, I'm scraping again," said the whale. "No tobacco and very
few barnacles in this world. O my grandmother's flukes, I might as
well be a bottlenose!"
Once more the water boiled, and beneath it the huge black body shot
away for the open sea.
"Fiona," said the boy, "do you really think it's cricket?"
"What isn't cricket?" she asked.
"Fiona," he said, "I've been a brother to you. I have done all the
things a brother ought to do. I have taught you to throw like a boy. I
have pinched you for new clothes. I have called you names, to make you
good-tempered. I have made remarks on your personal appearance, to
prevent your being vain. I have even fought with you, solely for your
good. And this is how you repay me. The other day you pretended to be
talking to a shore lark; to-day it was an old whale, who spouted and
banged his tail on the rock. If it's a joke, I don't see it. If it's
not a joke, do go into a lunatic asylum, and let me find a simpler
job."
Fiona tossed up mentally between hitting him and laughing; it came
down laughing.
"Urchin," she said, "it's all right. I don't understand it much better
than you do, but it has something to do with this bracelet of mine. I
can really understand them and they can understand me. If you doubt my
word, we will fight a duel with the boat stretchers, and I will bury
you in the sand here afterwards."
"Oh, I believe you when you talk like that," said the Urchin; "only
it's worse than the Latin grammar. _Psittacus loquitur_, "the parrot
talks"; but this thing seemed to be a whale; it was very like one."
"It was a whale," said Fiona. "He said his great-great-grandmother had
seen the Spanish captain land his doubloons, and that it was in the
west cave on Scargill Island."
"That means the big cave at the end facing the sea," said the boy.
"The cave that no one has ever got to the end of," said Fiona.
"The cave that's haunted," said the boy.
"But of course it's haunted; it's the ghosts of the Spaniards. Silly
of us not to have guessed."
Fiona had a hazy recollection of things her father used to say.
"I expect the haunting is thousands of years older than the
Spaniards," she said. "Urchin, are you afraid of ghosts?"
"Not a bit," said the Urchin stoutly. "They would be splendid to throw
stones at. It wouldn't hurt them."
"Come on then, let's go," said the girl. "There's lots of daylight."
"None of the people here will go into it, you know," said the Urchin.
"I know," said Fiona. "All the more reason for going on our own. There
might really be something there, if no one ever goes to take it away."
So the boat was launched, and the adventure also. Fiona pulled stroke;
the Urchin was a clumsy and unpunctual bow, and the girl had to steer
from the stroke oar, which needs more doing than you may think if you
haven't tried it. But they made the end of Scargill in time, and then
Fiona took both the oars and coasted, while the Urchin got out a
couple of bamboo poles, garnished with white flies, and let the casts
trail, occasionally getting one of the beautiful little scarlet lythe,
that came at the fly with the spring and dash of a sea trout. For even
adventurers need supper. And so they came, past many a smaller cave
mouth in the black side of the island, to the huge bluff that fronts
the full Atlantic, and the great west cave.
Atlantic was half asleep to-day, and muttered drowsily to the quiet
rocks outside. But the great cave was seldom quiet. In the winter,
when Atlantic turned himself restlessly and spoke aloud, the sound of
his speaking came back from its depths like the roar of a heavy gun;
and even in the stillness the lisp of the swell in it echoed as from
the roots of the island in a low intermittent boom. Outside, on the
calm water, floated the whiskered head of a seal, watching the boat
with gentle, fearless eyes,--"the officer on guard," Fiona
whispered;--and from the black cliff's face, like a hanging fringe
over the mouth of the cave, the water splashed down, trickle by
trickle, in quick, heavy drops. The children rowed in through the
little shower, and Fiona paddled gently up the cave. Its huge
limestone walls stood up stark on either hand, rising into the
darkness above, and sinking below into the green water, as far as eye
could follow them. Near the water-line grew a little seaweed, and some
white whelks clung; but as they went down the waterway these vanished,
and gray cliff and green water alike began to turn black. Looking
back, Fiona could see a bright patch, a patch of sky and
sky-reflecting sea, framed in the narrow slit of the cave's mouth. The
waterway was narrowing now; she shipped her oars and stood up, using
one as a paddle, and instructing the Urchin how to fend off the boat's
stern with his hands. In front, on a ledge in the cave's roof, it was
just possible to make out a row of blue dots in the growing darkness;
as the boat drew nearer, the blue dots fluttered, detached themselves
from the cliff, and a swarm of pigeons came whirring over the boat and
down the cave toward the sunlight;--"Your ghosts, Urchin," said the
girl. Henceforward the cave was void of life, unless some strange,
eyeless fish lurked in its inky depths. Darker and darker grew the
waterway, and the last gleam of light vanished. Fiona was feeling her
way now, aided by the phosphorescent drip from her oar blade; the
Urchin, with unusual sense, splashed his hands in the water to
increase the pale glow, which just revealed the line of the cliff.
Neither dare speak now; possibly, had Fiona not had some idea of what
was coming, she would have turned. But already there was a faint gleam
ahead, faint as a glow worm, but still a gleam; and as the boat slid
forward, and the low boom in the depths of the cave grew closer, the
cave walls very slowly began to grow gray again out of the blackness.
A few minutes more, and the walls were an outline, and before them, a
fringe of white on round wet stones, the end of the waterway. And as
the boat grounded, Fiona pointed up, and the Urchin, looking, saw a
little round hole; a natural shaft ran down into the cave from the
surface of the island, giving light enough for their eyes, now
accustomed to the darkness, to distinguish outlines.
They drew their boat up on the stones far enough for the swell not to
dislodge it; then the same impulse seized them both and they burst out
laughing, not aloud, for something in the place made it impossible to
laugh or talk aloud, but in a kind of mirthless whisper.
"We've come without any lights," said Fiona in an undertone.
"We have," said the Urchin. "But probably the stuff is only a few
yards above high-water mark; they wouldn't go far in."
"They might have," said Fiona; "they'd have had torches or
something."
"Let's go as far as we can, anyway, as we are here," said the Urchin.
So they started scrambling over the stones in the gray half-light.
Presently there rose before them a great mass of rock and earth, half
blocking the cave; it looked like some old landslip.
"It's easy at this end, Fiona," said the boy; and up they went, to
find that the rock barrier blocked most of what little light remained.
Beyond was darkness.
"We must go back and get light," said Fiona. "I can't even see the
stones below." A pause; then, "Stop swinging your feet, Urchin; I want
to listen."
"I'm not," said the Urchin.
Another pause, and then the Urchin spoke again, in a kind of stage
whisper, "I'm frightened." The words seemed squeezed out of him.
"We may as well go back, anyhow," said Fiona, in a strained voice.
"Down you go, Urchin."
The Urchin did go down at a considerable pace, and ran for the boat.
Fiona managed to walk, by repeating to herself all the time under her
breath, "You mustn't run, you mustn't run." But once in the boat she
did not rebuke the Urchin for standing up and taking the other oar;
and the pair paddled out, with many bumpings and scrapings, in a more
speedy and less scientific manner than that in which they had entered.
Once out in the sunlight they felt better. They started automatically
to fish home, and presently were talking again. But neither of them
referred to the thing that was uppermost in each mind, though each was
wondering if the other knew. For as they had sat on the wall of rock,
each had heard clearly, in the utter darkness of the unvisited cave,
the sound of heavy footsteps.