Jim Davis/Chapter VIII

CHAPTER VIII THE CAVE IN THE CLIFF

My heart was thumping on my ribs as I thrust and wriggled my body down the hole. I did not think how I was to get back again; it never once occurred to me that I might stick in the burrow, and die stifled there, like a rat in a trap. My one thought was, "I shall save the coastguards," and that thought nerved me to push on, careless of everything else. It was not at all easy at first, for the earth fell in my ears from the burrow-roof, and there was very little room for my body. Presently, as I had expected, the burrow broadened out—I could kneel erect in it quite easily; and then I found that I could stand up without bumping my head. I was not frightened, I was only very excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco was very strong. I could see hardly anything—only the light from the burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two, and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip, splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For a moment I stood still, not certain which way to go. Then I settled to myself the direction from which I had heard the voices, and turned along the shaft on that side.

When I had walked a few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip, splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel nothing, and then downward on the far side, but could feel nothing; and then I knocked away a scrap of stone from the top of the wall, and it seemed to fall for several seconds before a faint splash told me that it had reached water. The shaft seemed to turn to the right and left at this low wall, and at first I turned to the left, but only for a moment, as I soon saw that the right-hand turning would bring me more quickly to the cliff-face from which I had heard the voices. After I had made my choice, you may be sure that I went on hands and knees, feeling the ground in front of me. I went forward very, very slowly, with the wet mud coming through my knickerbockers, and the cold drops sometimes falling on my neck from the roof. At last I saw a little glimmer of light, and there was a turning to the left; and just beyond the turning there was a chamber in the rock, all lit up by the sun, as clear as clear. There were holes in the cliff-face, one of them a great big hole, and the sun shone through on to the floor of the cave, and I could look out and see the sea, and the seagulls going past after fish, and the clouds drifting up by the horizon. Very cautiously I crept up to the entrance to the chamber, and then into it, so that I could look all round it.

It was not a very large room (I suppose it was fifteen feet square) and it looked rather smaller than it was, because it was heaped almost to the roof in one or two places with boxes and kegs, and the various sea-stores, such as new rope and spare anchors. In one corner of it (in the corner at which I entered it) a flight of worn stone steps led downwards into the bowels of the earth. "Aha!" I thought; "so that's how you reach your harbour!" Then I crept up to one of the piles of boxes and cautiously peeped over.

I looked over cautiously, for as I entered the room I had the eerie feeling which one gets sometimes at night; I felt that there was somebody else in the room. Sure enough there was somebody else—two somebodies—and my heart leaped up in joy to see them. Sitting on the ground, tied by the body to some of the boxes over which I peered, were the two missing coastguards. Their backs were towards me, and their hands and feet were securely bound; but they were unhurt, that was the great thing. One of them was quietly smoking, filling the cave with strong tobacco smoke; the other was asleep, breathing rather heavily. It was evidently a pleasant holiday for the pair of them. No other person was in the room, but I saw that on the far side of the chamber another gallery led on into the cliff to another chamber, and from this chamber came the sound of many voices talking (in a dull quiet way), and the slow droning of the song of a drunken man. I shut my eyes, and lay across the boxes as still as a dead man, trying to summon up enough courage to speak to the coastguard; and all the time the drunkard's song quavered and shook, and died down, and dragged on again, as though it would never end. Afterwards I often heard that song, in all its thirty stanzas; and I have only to repeat a line of it to bring back to myself the scene of the sunny cave, with the bound coastguard smoking, and the smugglers talking and talking just a few paces out of sight.

"And the gale it roar-ed dismally  As we went to New Barbary,"

said the singer; and then some one asked a question, and some one struck a light for his pipe, and the singer droned on and on about the bold Captain Glen, and the ship which met with such disaster.

At last I summoned up enough courage to speak. I crawled over the boxes as far as I could, and touched the coastguard. "Sh!" I said, in a low voice, "Don't make a sound. I've come to rescue you."

The man stared violently (I dare say his nerves were in a bad way after his night in the cave), he dropped his pipe with a little clatter on the stones, and turned to stare at me.

"Sh!" I said again. "Don't speak. Don't make a sound."

I crept round the boxes to him, and opened my knife. It was a strong knife, with very sharp blades (Marah used to whet them for me), so that it did not take me long to cut through the "inch-and-a-half-rope," which lashed the poor fellow to the boxes.

"Thankee, master," the man said, as he rose to his feet and stretched himself. "I was getting stiff. Now, let's get out of here. D'ye know the way out?"

"Yes," I said, "I think I do. Oh, don't make a noise; but come this way. This way."

Very quietly we stole out by the gallery by which I had entered. We made no attempt to rouse the sleeping man; he slept too heavily, and we could not afford to run risks. I don't know what the coastguard's feelings were. As for myself, I was pretty nearly fainting with excitement. I could hear my heart go thump, thump, thump; it seemed to be right up in my very throat. As we stepped into the gloom of the gallery, the smugglers behind us burst into the chorus at the end of the song—

"O never more do I intend  For to cross the raging main   But to live at home most cheerfull-ee,   And thus I end my traged-ee."

I felt that if I could get away from that adventure I, too, would live at home most cheerfully until the day of my death. We took advantage of the uproar to step quickly into the darkness of the passage.

Just before we came to the low stone breastwork which had given me such a shock a few minutes before, we heard some one whistling a bar of a tune. The tune was the tune of—

"Oh, my true love's listed, and wears a white cockade."

And to our horror the whistler was coming quickly towards us. In another second we saw him stepping along the gallery, swinging a lantern. He was a big, strong man, evidently familiar with the way.

"Back," said the coastguard in a gasp. "Get back, for your life, and down that staircase."

The man didn't see us; didn't even hear us. He stopped at the stone breastwork, opened his lantern, and lit his pipe at the candle, and then stepped on leisurely towards the chamber. Our right course would have been "to go for him," knock him down, knock the breath out of him, lash his wrists and ankles together, and bolt for the entrance. But the coastguard was rather upset by his adventure, and he let the minute pass by. Had he rushed at the man as soon as he appeared; but, there—it is no use talking. We didn't rush at him, we scuttled back into the chamber, and then down the worn stone steps cut out of the rock, which seemed to lead down and down into the bowels of the earth. As we hurried down, leaping lightly on the tips of our toes, the quaver of the tune came after us, so clearly that I even made a guess at the whistler's identity.

When we had run down the staircase about half-way down to sea-level we found ourselves in a cave as big as the church at Dartmouth. It was fairly light, for the entrance was large, though low, and at low water (as it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings, and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon it; due, I suppose, to the deep water of the channel. I saw all these things afterwards, at leisure; I did not notice them very clearly in that first moment. All that I saw then was a large sea-lugger, lying moored at the cavemouth, some few feet lower down. She was a beautiful model of a boat (I had seen that much in seeing her bow from the top of the cliff), but of course her three masts were unstepped, and she was rather a handful for a man and a boy. We saw her, and made a leap for her together, and both of us landed in her bows at the same instant, just as the man with the lantern, peering down from the top of the stairs, asked us what in the world we were playing at down there.

The coastguard made no answer, for he was busy in the bows; I think he had his knife through the painter in five seconds. Then he snatched up a boat-hook (I took an oar), and we drove her with all our strength along the channel into (or, I should say, towards) the open sea and freedom.

"Hey," cried the man with the lantern, "chuck that! Are you mad?" He took a step or two down the staircase, in order to see better.

"Drive her, oh, drive her, boy!" cried the coastguard.

I thrust with all my force, the coastguard gave a mighty heave, the lugger slid slowly seawards.

"Hey!" yelled the smuggler, clattering upstairs, dropping his lantern down on us. "Hey, Marah, Jewler, Smokewell, Hankin—all of you! They've got away in the boat."

"Now the play begins," said the coastguard. "Another heave, and another—together now!"

We drove the lugger forward again, so that half her length thrust out into the sea. We ran aft to give her a final thrust out, and just at that moment her bow struck upon the rock at the cave mouth: in the excitement of the moment we had not realised that one of us was wanted in the bows to shove her nose clean into the sea. The blow threw us both upon our hands and knees in the stern sheets; it took us half-a-dozen seconds to pick ourselves up, and then I realised that I should have to jump forward and guide the boat clear of all outlying dangers. As I sprang to the bows there came yells from the top of the stairs, where I saw half-a-dozen smugglers coming full tilt towards us.

Some one cried out, "Drop it, drop it, you fool!" Another voice cried, "Fire!" and two or three shots cracked out, making a noise like a cannonade. The coastguard gave a last desperate heave, I shoved the bows clear, and lo! we were actually gliding out. The coastguard's body was outside the cliff in full sunlight, giving a final thrust from the cliff wall. And then I saw Marah leap into the stern sheets as they passed out of the cave; he gave a little thrust to the coastguard, just a gentle thrust—enough to make him lose his balance and topple over.

"That's enough now," he said, with a grim glance at me. "That's enough for one time."

He picked up the coastguard's boat-hook (the man just grinned and looked sheepish; he made no attempt to fight with Marah) and thrust the boat back into the cave with half-a-dozen deft strokes. Another smuggler dropped down into the stern sheets, looked at the coastguard with a grin, and helped to work the lugger back into the cave. A third man threw down a sternfast to secure her; a fourth jumped into the bow and began to put a long splice into the painter which we had cut. We had tried and we had failed; here we were prisoners again, and I felt sick at heart lest those rough smugglers should teach us a lesson for our daring. But Marah just told the coastguard to jump out.

"Out you get," he said, "and don't try that again."

"I won't," said the coastguard.

"You'd better not," said another smuggler. That was all.

We were helped out of the lugger on to the ledge above the channel, and the smugglers walked behind us up the stairs to the room we had just left. The other coastguard was still snoring, and that seemed strange to me, for the last few minutes had seemed like hours.

"Better bring him inside, boss," said one of the smugglers. "He may try the same game."

"He's got no young sprig to cut his lashings," said Marah. "He'll be well enough." So they left the man to his quiet and passed on with their other prisoners into the inner room.