HOW HE CAME INTO AN UNKNOWN PLACE
Having lodged his eggs in a ledge under the big slab, Gard stole away to
learn, if he could, if he had the rock all to himself.
He wanted water, and he wanted his bottle of cognac and the tin dipper;
for puffins’ eggs, while not unpalatable beaten up with cognac, are of a
flavour calculated to exercise the strongest stomach when eaten raw.
He feared the men would have made away with all his small possessions,
but he could only try. So he stole like a shadow round the crown of the
ridge and along towards the shelter, standing at times motionless for
whole minutes till the rush of the waves below should pass and give him
chance of hearing.
But on L’Etat the sound of many waters never ceases night or day, and
the night wind hummed among the stones of the shelter, and, as it
happened, John Drillot had just lurched over in avoidance of a lump of
rock which was intruding on his comfort, and in so doing had lodged his
heavy boot in Peter Vaudin’s ribs, and so their sonorous duet was
stilled, and neither of them was very sound asleep, when Gard, after
listening anxiously and hearing nothing, dropped on his hands and knees
and felt cautiously inside.
Peter felt the blind hand groping in the dark, and was wide awake in an
instant. He hurled himself at the intruder, as well as a man could who
had been lying back against the wall half asleep a moment before; and
Gard turned and sped away along the side of the ridge, with Peter at his
heels and John Drillot thundering ponderously in the rear.
“What is’t, Peter boy?” shouted John.
“It’s him. This way!” yelled Peter, out of the dimness in front, as he
stumbled and staggered along the ragged inadequacies of the ridge.
If Gard had had time for consideration, he would have led them a chase
elsewhere first, but, in the sudden upsetting of lighting on what he had
persuaded himself was not there, he lost his head and made straight for
cover.
Peter Vaudin was at the base of the rock wall as he wriggled silently
under the big slab, and it was only by a violent jerk that he got his
foot clear of Peter’s grip. And Peter, strung to the occasion, kept his
hand on the spot where the foot had disappeared, and waited a moment for
John Drillot to come up before he followed it.
“Gone in here,” he jerked, as he climbed cautiously up.
“Can’t have gone far, then,” panted John. “Sure it was him?”
“Had him by the foot, but he got loose. Here we are,” as he poked about,
and came at last on the hole below the slab. “Come on, John ... can’t be
far away.... Big hole”--as he kicked about down below--“no bottom, far
as I can see.”
“Best wait for daylight, to see where we’re getting.”
“Oui gia! Man doux, it’s not me’s going down here till I know what’s
below.”
So they sat and kicked their heels and waited for the day, certain in
their own minds that their quarry was run to earth and as good as
caught.
Gard had swept down both his coat and his cloth full of eggs in his
sudden entrance. He stood at the bottom of the well to see if they would
follow, while Peter’s long legs kicked about for foothold. He heard them
decide to wait for daylight, and then he noiselessly picked up his coat
and his soppy bundle of broken eggs, pushed them into the tunnel, and
crawled in after them.
He was trapped, indeed, but he doubted very much if any fisherman on
Sark would venture down that tunnel. They were brawny men, used to leg
and elbow room, and, as a rule, heartily detested anything in the shape
of underground adventure. They might, of course, get over some miners to
explore for them. Or they might content themselves with sitting down on
top of his hole until he was starved out. In any case, his rope was
nearly run; but yet he was not disposed to shorten it by so much as an
inch.
As he wormed his way along the tunnel, the recollection of those other
openings off the dead man’s cave came back to him. He would try them. He
pushed on with a spurt of hope.
The tunnel was not nearly so long now that he knew where he was going;
in fact, now that nothing but it stood between him and capture, it
seemed woefully inadequate.
When his head and elbows no longer grazed rock he dropped his coat and
crawled into the chamber. He felt his way round to the dried packages,
and cautiously emptied half-a-dozen and prepared them for his use.
This set him sneezing so violently that it seemed impossible that the
watchers outside should not hear him. It also gave him an idea.
He struck a light and kindled one of his torches, and the dead man
leaped out of the darkness at him as before. That gave him another idea.
Propping up his light on the floor, he emptied package after package of
the powdered tobacco into the tunnel, and wafted it down towards the
entrance with his jacket. Then with his knife he cut the lashings from
the dead man’s hands and feet, and carried him across--he was very
light, for all his substance had long since withered out of him--and
laid him in the tunnel as though he was making his way out.
If he knew anything of Sark men and miners, he felt fairly secure for
some time to come, so he sat himself down, as far as possible from the
snuff, and made such a meal as was possible off puffins’ eggs, mixed
good and bad and unredeemed by any palliating odour and flavour. They
were not appetising, but they stayed his stomach for the time being.
It was only then that he remembered that he had left his gun and
powder-flask behind him. He had placed them on a ledge just inside the
mouth of the tunnel, and in his haste had forgotten to pick them up. He
had no intention of using them, however, and he would not go back for
them.
When his scanty meal was done, he cautiously emptied a number of the
packages and rolled them into torches, and deliberated as to which of
the black openings he should attempt first.
That one opposite, out of which the dead man’s legs sprawled
grotesquely, was the one by which he had entered. This one, then, near
which he sat, must run on towards the centre of the island--if it ran on
at all; and, since all were equally unknown and hopeful, he would try
this first.
His tarred paper torches, though they burned with a clear flame, gave
forth a somewhat pungent odour, so he kicked one of the small barrels to
pieces, and with three of the staves and a piece of string made a holder
which would carry the torch upright, and also permit him to lay it on
the ground or push it in front of him, if need be.
The first tunnel ran in about thirty feet, and then the slant of the
roof met the floor at so sharp an angle that further passage was
impossible.
The second, third, and fourth the same; and he began to fear they were
all blind alleys leading nowhere.
The openings near his own entrance tunnel he had left till the last,
since they obviously led outwards.
Two of them shut down in the same way as all the others, and it was only
the dogged determination to leave no chance untried that drove him, with
a fresh supply of torches, down the last one of all, the one alongside
that out of which the dead man’s legs projected.
It took a turn to the left within a dozen feet of the entrance, and,
like the rest, it presently narrowed down through a slope in the roof;
but just at its narrowest, when he feared he had come to the end, there
came a dip in the flooring corresponding to the slope up above, and he
found he could wriggle through. Once through, the passage widened and
continued to widen, and the going became very rough and broken, with
piles of ragged rock and deep black pitfalls in between.
Then, of a sudden, he saw the walls and roof of his passage fall away,
and his light flickered feebly in the darkness of a vast place, and he
crouched on the rock up which he had climbed, and sat in wonder.
Somewhere below him he could hear the slow rise and fall of water, dull
and heavy and without any splash, like the dumb breathing of a captive
monster.
And every now and again there came, from somewhere beyond, a low dull
thud, like the blow of a padded hammer, and a distant subdued rustle
along the outside of the darkness. He knew it was not inside the place
he was in, for he could hear the soft rise and fall of the water quite
clearly, but these other sounds came to him from a distance, muted as
though his ears had suddenly gone deaf.
“Those dull blows,” he said to himself, “are the waves on the outside of
L’Etat. That low rustling is the rush of them along the lower rocks. The
water inside here probably comes in through some openings below
tide-level. I am quite safe here, even if they get past the dead man’s
cave--quite safe until I starve. Unless there are fish to be had”--and
he felt a spark of hope. “And maybe there are devil-fish”--and he
shivered and glanced below and about him fearfully.
His homely torch did no more than faintly illumine the rock he sat on
and those close at hand, and cast a gigantic uncouth shadow of himself
on the rough wall behind. All beyond was solid darkness, blacker even
than a black Sark night.
He sat wondering vaguely if any before him had penetrated to that
strange place. It was odd and uncanny to feel that his eyes were the
very first to look upon it. And then, away in front, and apparently at a
great distance above him, he became aware of a difference in the solid
darkness. It seemed almost as though it had thinned. His eye had seemed
able for a moment to carry beyond the narrow circle of the torch, but
when he peered into the void to see what this might mean, it all seemed
solid as before.
As his straining eyes sought relief in something visible, their
side-glance caught once more that same impression of movement in the
darkness. And presently it came again and stronger--a strange greenish
fluttering up in the roof--very faint, as though the roof were smoke on
which a soft green light played for a moment and vanished.
But by degrees the light grew, though at no time did it become more than
a wan ghost of a light, and from its curious fluttering he judged that
it came through water.
Reasoning from the trend of the cavern, he came to the conclusion that
somewhere on that further side there were openings into the deep water
beyond, on which the sunlight played and struck at times into the cave,
and he was keen to look more closely into it.
He lowered his torch to the side of his rock, and its feeble flicker
fell on a chaos of rocks below. He looked long and cautiously for supple
yellow arms or tiny whip-like threads which might coil suddenly round
his legs and drag him to hideous death.
But he saw nothing of the kind. The rocks were dry and bare, not a
limpet nor a sea-weed visible, and leaving his jacket for a landmark as
before, he slowly let himself down from one huge boulder to another,
till he found himself climbing another great pile in front.
When at last his head rose above this ridge, he almost rolled over at
the sight of two huge green eyes blinking lazily at him out of the
darkness in front--two great openings far below sea-level, through which
filtered dimly the wavering green light whose refractions fluttered in
the roof.
The vast trough below him heaved gently now and then, with a ponderous
solemnity which filled him with awe. He felt himself an intruder. He
felt like a fly creeping about a sleeping tiger. He hardly dared to
breathe, lest the brooding spirit of the place should rise suddenly out
of some dark corner and squash him on his rock as one does a crawling
insect; and his anxious eyes swept to and fro for the smallest sign of
danger.
But, plucking up courage from immunity, and dreading to be caught in the
dark in that weird place, he crawled over the boulders towards the side
wall of the cavern to get as near to those openings as possible. From
the very slight movement of the water, which was ever on the boil round
the outside of L’Etat, he judged them deep down among the roots of the
island, far below the turmoil of the surface, but he must see and make
sure.
With infinite toil and many a scrape and bruise, he got round at last,
and could look right down into the dim green depths, and what he saw
there filled him with sickening fear.
The water was crystal clear, and in through the nearer opening, as he
looked, a huge octopus propelled itself in leisurely fashion, its great
tentacles streaming out behind, its hideous protruding eyes searching
eagerly for prey.
Just inside the opening it gathered itself together for a moment, and
seemed to look so meaningly right up into his eyes that he found himself
shrinking behind a rock lest it should see him. Then it clamped itself
to the side of the opening and spread wide its arms for anything that
might come its way.
He watched it, fascinated. He saw fishes large and small unconsciously
touch the quivering tentacles, which on the instant twisted round them
and dragged them in to the rending beak below the hideous eyes. And then
he saw another similar monster come floating in on similar quest, and in
a moment they were locked in deadly fight--such a writhing and coiling
and straining and twisting of monstrous fleshy limbs, which swelled and
thrilled, and loosed and gripped, with venom past believing--such a
clamping to this rock and that--such tremendous efforts at dislodgment.
It was a nightmare. It sickened him. He turned and crawled feebly away,
anxious only now to get out of this awful place without falling foul of
any similar monsters among the rocks.