Island Gold/Chapter 20

good the discovery did us, I reflected bitterly. A thousand, two, three thousand yards—in that thin atmosphere it was impossible to gauge distances accurately—of pathless mountain lay between us and the idol. Indeed, I hardly gave the solving of the riddle more than a passing thought now; for my mind was engaged in the more urgent problem of how to extricate Marjorie in safety from the perilous pass to which I had brought her.

We could not remain on the rock indefinitely; that much was clear to me. Already, under the influence of the sun's rays beating ever more fiercely down on that exposed ledge, the pangs of thirst were making themselves felt. It was Marjorie who mentioned it first. She asked if we could find water anywhere. At our level I thought it was doubtful and told her so. Marjorie Garth, I discovered, was a girl who liked to be told the truth.

“What about that cave beyond the pillar?” she asked, leaning across me to point at the low opening I had remarked in the back wall of our ledge.

“While it's light,” I answered, “one of us must remain and guard the path. I don't know what their inaction means ... but we must be prepared for anything. Why don't you have a look at the cave? But go carefully; the roof seems very low.”

I gave her my hand and helped her up. She stepped across me, turned round and gave me a little smile, then bending down disappeared into the cave opening. And I, with my automatic in my hand, whilst I keenly watched the two little ribands of path below me, racked my brains to find a way out of our impasse. I would try and hold out till dark. If, by then, the Naomi had not come, we would endeavour, under cover of the night, to reach our cave on the shore and wait for her. If we were overpowered, I would capitulate and tell Clubfoot all I knew. In the meantime I should have to abandon my hunt for the treasure.

A faint sound behind me made me start. It was shrill but distant. I listened. I heard it again, and this time I recognized the call.

“Coo ... eee!”

It was Marjorie calling from the interior of the cave. With a quick glance at the path below, I scrambled to my feet. The entrance to the cave was not more than four feet high, and I had to bend almost double to enter. Within, for a few feet from the opening, there was enough light to see that the floor, brittle and crumbly, sloped down into a dark void. I felt my way cautiously along the side of the cave foot by foot, stooping low to avoid the roof and seeing nothing. Then, from somewhere far below, as it seemed at my very feet, the girl's cry went forth again:

“Coo ... eee!”

I stopped.

“Right!” I shouted. “Where are you?”

From far below the cry came up, faint and a little quavery.

“Down here in the dark and I don't like it! But I've found water! There are some steps cut in the rock!”

The lure of the water was irresistible. I glanced at the path, above which hung a trembling curtain of heat. It was still deserted. I judged that I might safely risk a quick dash into the cave to quench my burning thirst.

The cave narrowed as it receded into the rock and presently my foot shot out into space. I groped a bit and struck a shallow step. Then I suddenly remembered that I had a stump of candle in my pocket. I had picked it up on the previous evening when we had been loading the launch. An old campaigner never leaves candle-ends lying about. They are apt to come in useful—as witness this case.

So I struck a match and lit my bit of candle and peered down. The feeble ray only illumined a black void, a dark narrow shaft; but I saw that the steps descended almost sheer down one side. I was now able to stand erect, so, clutching the side of the rock with one hand and bearing my lighted candle in the other, I started the descent. And I counted as I went.

I had counted fourteen steps when suddenly the ground appeared to give beneath my feet, I clutched wildly at the side of the rock, my hand slipped over the smooth surface and with a soft rumble the whole of the steps seemed to slip away. My light was extinguished and in a shower of crumbling rock and a cloud of acrid dust, I slithered into the black shaft.

Well, I was blown sky-high once by a shell in France, and I remember struggling madly with mind and body, as it seemed when I looked back on the incident afterwards, against the invincible force which bore me upwards until I gave up the struggle ... and never even remembered the subsequent bump. But in this case, though I fought all the way to check my fall, I never lost consciousness, and I felt in every bone of my body the terrific jar I received on landing on my back on a hard rocky floor.

Some lingering echo told me that the girl had screamed, though I don't think I really heard her voice. But the next thing I was aware of was a little whimpering sound. Then from the darkness the girl's voice said: “Oh, Desmond!” and I heard a little sob.

I felt dazed and shaken, but I staggered to my feet.

“Marjorie!” I called, “where are you? I'm all right. There's no damage done...”

I heard a footstep, then a hand was thrust into mine, a small warm hand that entwined its fingers in mine and wrung them hard. Then, scarcely realizing what I was doing or why I did it, I drew her to me and put my arms about her, felt the caress of her soft hair against my cheek as her head rested on my shoulder.

And so we remained a minute or more in that inky darkness because we were glad to have found one another again.

By some miracle I had kept my candle-end in my hand all through my fall. When presently Marjorie drew away from me, I fished out my matches and rekindled the stump.

We found ourselves standing in a long narrow chamber with a roof which, low to start with, sloped down until it stood not more than four feet from the floor. The place smelt damp and musty, and here and there the walls gleamed wet where the light of the candle struck them. Along one side of the cave was a kind of stone slab.

Just behind where we stood was the narrow shaft by which we had descended, at its foot a jumble of débris. I raised the candle aloft and strained my eyes to see up the shaft. I stared into blackness; but I noted that where the stairs had been cut there now remained nothing but the sheer overhanging wall of rock.

I took Marjorie's arm and pointed to the wet glistening on the walls.

“Let's drink first!” I said.

My voice sounded strangely hollow in the vaulted place. I turned and led her to the rock. The water was dead cold and delightfully fresh to the touch. The girl put her lips to the wall and drank. I followed her example. She finished before I was through; for it seemed to me that the sun on that ledge outside had drained every drop of moisture out of my system and I drank and drank again. But suddenly she plucked my sleeve and whispered in an awed voice:

“What ... what is that?”

She pointed at the stone slab of which I have spoken. It resembled a rough altar built up of big stones laid together like an Irish wall. And on it lay three or four long and shrunken-looking packets. The rays of my candle picked out a round substance that gleamed brightly through the wrappings of the nearest of these objects.

Even before I stepped up to the stone table to get a closer inspection, I knew what they were. Here lay the bones of that forgotten race which had once inhabited Cock Island, the sculptors of the idol which had frowned at us across the valley. We had blundered into one of the island burial-places scooped out of the heart of the rock. The high light which my candle had caught up came from a thigh-bone which had worn its way through the bark envelope. The girl saw it, recognized it for what it was, and shrank away.

“Let's get away quickly from here!” said Marjorie nervously. “These ... these mummies frighten me dreadfully. Desmond, take me out into the sunshine again...”

Her voice pleaded piteously, and it went to my heart. For I was wondering...

“Good Lord!” I said, “they're naught but a handful of dust. There's nothing to be frightened of! Come and sit at the bottom of the shaft while I see about finding a way up!”

I sat her down on a pile of débris and gave her the candle to hold while, mounting as high as I could on the heaped-up rubbish, I sought for a means of scaling the shaft. But the face of the rock from which the stairs had broken away under my weight, was now overhanging and so high that I could not see the top. The rest of the shaft was smooth and hard, and try as I would I could get hand- or foot-hold nowhere.

My initial surmise had proved all too correct. To return by the way we had come was impossible. To reach the top we should require to be hauled up by a rope. But, in order not to frighten the girl, I kept on trying to find a way to clamber aloft. And all the time I was thinking that, failing any other egress, those blackened mummies were to be our companions until...

At last, with torn hands and slashed boots, I climbed down again to where she sat.

“No good,” I said.

She stared at me in a dazed sort of way.

“Oh,” she exclaimed wearily, “there must be a way up! We can't stay here!”

She sprang to her feet and clambered up on the débris, peering aloft. I reached up and took her hand.

“We'll explore the cave and see if there's another way out,” I said soothingly.

Marjorie turned and looked down on me.

“And if there isn't...” she began. “Oh,” she added hastily, “don't think me a coward, but I have such a horror of shut-in places. And you've altered so much since we came down here, your voice is so grave, it scares me. Oh, Desmond, we're not caught here for good...”

I smiled up at her.

“How you run on!” I said as cheerfully as I could. “God bless my soul, we're not at the end of our tether yet. There's certain to be another exit at the far end of the cave...”

There was an opening of sorts; for one of the first things I had done on landing in the subterranean chamber was to see what means of escape it afforded other than that by which we had entered. But it was a slit, a mere air-hole in the living rock which, to judge by a cursory examination, would scarcely afford passage for a dog.

I have been in some tight corners in my time, and it has always seemed to me that the most frightening thing about death is not the prospect of death itself, but rather the realization—and it usually comes upon one suddenly and without warning—of the inexorability of fate, the utter impotence of man to escape his destiny. And very soon after crashing down into the cave I had understood that our chances of escape were reduced almost to the vanishing point.

We had no food, only water and air. Death by slow starvation awaited us unless we could attract attention and secure help. Clubfoot and his people might he willing enough in their own interest to rescue us. But what chance had we, immured in the bowels of the earth as we were, of letting him know where we were? And how was Garth to find us when the Naomi came back?...

But Marjorie had risen to her feet. Her face was a little flushed and there was a glitter of excitement in her eyes:

“That's it!” she cried; “there must, of course, be another way out!”

And picking up the candle-end she darted across the cave.

I hadn't the heart to follow her. Better, I thought, that she should realize for herself our true situation. Sooner or later she must under stand. I saw the yellow glimmer of the light at the end of the rock chamber and watched great shadows flicker across the roof as she moved the candle to and fro. Then she was beside me again, the candle between us, and I knew by the convulsive movement of her shoulders that she wept.

What could I do? What hope had I to offer? I stretched out my hand and she clasped it. Then, to spare our sole illuminant, I put out the candle. I had thirty-four wax matches left.

Thus hand in hand we sat for some time in silence. The darkness was thick and clammy like a black velvet pall, the sort of darkness of which the city-dweller has no experience. Presently the girl grew calmer and with one or two shuddering sighs her sobs ceased.

“My dear,” said I, “I want you to have faith in me. I have been up against it so often: yet always in the end I have come out all right.” I broke off; it was hard to speak with conviction.

“I am afraid,” the girl moaned, “so terribly afraid. At the front I used to be proud of having less nerves than the other girls. But to sit still, in the dark, and wait for death.... I never imagined anything so terrible. Do ... do you know that I have to keep a tight hold on myself to keep myself from screaming?”

“Yes,” I said; “and I want to tell you, Marjorie, that I think it's wonderful how well you take it. I've seen men get hysterical with much less reason!”

“And you?” asked Marjorie; “aren't you afraid of death?”

“When it comes, yes,” I answered. “But this job of ours, my dear, teaches us to live for the present and let the future take care of itself. At the front the worst part of a push was the waiting for it; when the whistles went and the barrage lifted, one forgot all one's doubts and fears. And the only way to get through that bad afternoon before zero hour was to live for the moment, concentrate on the petty fatigues and annoyances of humdrum life, and decline to cross one's bridges until one came to them...”

“But aren't you fond of life?”

“It's no good being fond of anything on this earth,” I told her, “because you're irredeemably compelled to lose it in the end....”

The girl was silent.

Somewhere in the cave there echoed the melancholy drip of water.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asked suddenly.

“Of course I have, the same as anybody else.” But she was not content with generalities. I had to tell her about a girl at Darjeeling, when I was a young sub., whose abrupt change of mind had once and for all put all idea of matrimonial bliss out of my head.

“Have you ever been in love?” I challenged, by way of changing the conversation. But she evaded the question.

“You'd marry if you met the ideal woman?” she queried.

“Perhaps circumstances would prevent it again,” said I.

“What is your ideal woman like?”

Again I heard that sad splash of water from the darkness and it brought me back with a pang to our position. I smiled to think of us two, imprisoned in this death-chamber of the Southern Seas, calmly discussing the eternal question of life.

“She's tall and slim and clean in mind and body,” said I: “she must trust me and be a companion as well as a lover!”

“Have you ever met her ... since the girl at Darjeeling?”

“My dear,” I said, “the girl at Darjeeling is now a stout divorcée, who, as the price of her husband's freedom from her shocking temper, retains the custody of the children whom she neglects disgracefully...”

The girl laughed a low little laugh.

“How severe you are!” she commented. Then she asked: “But have you met your ideal since?”

“Yes,” said I, knowing full well whither the conversation was drifting.

“Then why don't you marry her?”

“I haven't asked her,” I said.

“But why not, if she is your ideal?”

“Because,” I replied, throwing caution to the winds—and, after all, what was convention to us in our circumstances?—“she is too rich!”

“You don't ask me,” said the girl after a pause, “whether I have an ideal?”

“Naturally,” I retorted, “since you evaded answering my question when I asked you if you had ever been in love...”

“The man I marry,” she said in a low voice, “must make me feel such confidence in him that even in the hour of death I shall not be afraid...”

I dropped her hand and stood up. It's all very well to be philosophical about meeting death when you have no attachment on earth; but this slim, proud girl with the grey eyes and the clustering brown hair was stimulating in me the desire to live.

I struck a match and lit the candle.

“It's now a quarter to four in the afternoon,” I said. “In order to spare our forces as much as possible, we will shout once in turn every quarter of an hour in case there should be anybody above on the shelf. I'll start now!”

And raising my head up the shaft I halloed. My voice started the echoes ringing through the cave, but no human voice responded.

“And now,” I said, “I believe we'll have another look at that air-hole. Some of this volcanic rock is very brittle and we might be able to enlarge the opening...”

We crossed the cave together, bending as the roof sloped down towards the farther end. The opening was a long narrow slit, not two feet deep, the top-side jagged with snags of rock. The candle guttered as I held it in the orifice and I felt the cool air on my face.

It was undoubtedly an outlet into the fresh air: but how could one hope to worm one's way through that narrow vent? I thrust my hand with the candle into the opening and my arm went in up to the shoulder. It seemed to be a passage; for my hand encountered no resistance and the roof, if it did not get any higher, was not any lower. The rock was hard and solid.

I drew back and scanned the opening. It reminded me of the entrance of some caves where we used to scramble at school. “Cox's Hole” had just such a narrow squeeze at the entrance, which, however, opened up into quite a stately grotto beyond. I peeled off my jacket, then took off my collar and tie.

“Where I can go,” I said to Marjorie, “you can! I'm going to have a shot to get through!”

The girl made no comment. She knelt on the hard floor of the cavern, her hands clasped in front of her. But she smiled as though to encourage me.

I didn't get far. My head went through all right; but a jutting edge of rock hanging down caught my shoulders and pinned me tight. Wriggle and thrust as I would I could make no progress at all, and at length, in order not to stick inextricably, I had to give it up.

As I turned and looked at her an idea struck me. Marjorie Garth was slim and very supple, and but for her softly rounded throat and the gentle swell of her bosom, one might have taken her for a boy.

“My dear,” said I, “you must have a try. It's only my breadth of shoulders that prevents me from getting through. I believe you'll manage all right...”

The girl looked at me open-eyed.

“And leave you here?” was all she said.

I took her hand.

“Listen to me! The yacht must be back very soon. You can hide somewhere near the shore and, when you hear the gun, make your way to our cave on the beach and wait for the Naomi's launch. You run the risk, I know, of falling into Clubfoot's hands again. But you have a sporting chance. Believe me, if you stay here, you haven't even that...”

With a quick gesture the girl sank her face in her hands.

“No!” she exclaimed, “No, no! I can't do it! I can't leave you like this!”

Gently I drew her hands away from her tear-stained face.

“Fate has sent us this chance,” I reminded her, “and we must take it. I told you I always come out on top in the end, and this is our opportunity. Isn't it better to have a run for your life than to stay here and die like a rat in a hole? If there should prove to be a way out, you can always come back to the air-hole and report to me. If there isn't, we can be together again...”

Marjorie nodded silently.

“If Grundt,” she said presently, “should capture me again, he may cross-examine me about the cipher...”

“Tell him nothing!” I answered promptly.

“But if he makes it a condition for rescuing you...”

“Then I have told you nothing. That is my secret, Marjorie. If Clubfoot is to be told, I shall tell him myself. Promise me that you will keep faith!”

“But if the only means of saving you is to tell Clubfoot what he wants to know...”

“Clubfoot will never guess that you know unless you tell him. Remember he is a German, and therefore has no opinion of women. He would never imagine that I had told you anything about the hiding-place of the treasure. Trust me, my dear! Our luck is in again! If you get out, I shall too, somehow—depend on me!”

Then while she took off her shoes I divided the candle in two. I thrust her shoes, together with her half of the candle, as far as I could reach in the opening. I gave her half of my store of matches. She put them in her breeches pocket. Then I turned and we faced one another in the darkness.

“Good luck, partner,” I said. “We shall meet again soon!”

“I feel that I am abandoning you,” she answered in a low voice. “Supposing I should fail?”

“You'll have made me very happy in the knowledge that you've escaped!”

With a little catch in her voice she demanded:

“Don't you think of yourself at all?”

“It's more pleasant to think of you!”

She made a little pause. Then she softly whispered: “Money doesn't count down here!” and lifted her face to mine.

I took her in my arms and kissed her whilst she clung to me in the darkness. Then she dropped to her knees and crawled into the opening. For a few instants the yellow glimmer of the candle was obscured and I heard her breathing hard. Then the faint glimmer of light reappeared and I heard her voice from the other side.

“There's a winding passage and the air is quite fresh. The wind is blowing in my face. Good-bye, Desmond, dear!”

“Au revoir, my dear!” I cried out of the darkness, and silence fell again.

I stood there listening for a spell; then, following the advice of the French sage who said that he who sleeps dines, I stretched myself out on the rocky floor and soon fell into a heavy slumber.

When I awoke I relit my stump of candle. My watch had stopped. In that damning darkness it was impossible to tell whether it was night or day. I sat up and stretched myself with no other sensation save that I was ravenously hungry. The silence was oppressive. I lay back against the rocky wall and waited....