The Sea Wolves/Chapter 20

night was one of wind and storm, the sky being scoured by cumulose clouds which permitted the moon's light but at intervals; and blasts whistled dismally through the gullies of the hills. During the first stage of the journey the path of the ravine which the man and the lad trod continued as a parallel of the sea; but at the distance of a third part of a mile or less from the camp there was a sharp turn of it; and there a more open way, bearing evidences of human handiwork, rose with an easy gradient toward the highland. The new road had a width of six feet even at the narrows of it, and was easy to walk upon, though strewn with boulders and often wet with the flashing cascades which gushed from the softer rock. As for the walls, they, in the moments when a glow of the moon's rays struck down into the chasm, shone with the fire of jasper and of quartz and of ore of antimony; and through the canopy of peaks the stars were seen clothed with an infinite brilliance and beauty.

I have said that the broader path appeared at the outset to lead to the highland and away from the sea, but a longer exploration of it disclosed many windings and labyrinthic passages; so that the two presently lost knowledge of their situation, or of the direction in which the way was carrying them. They now found it necessary to bring great caution to the work, more especially in the intervals when the path lay hid in utter darkness; and often they stood quite still to listen for the sound of voices or of others moving; but the place was possessed of a great silence, broken only by the sough of the wind and the splash of the water where the mountain streams fell toward the bay.

It must have been at a distance of at least a mile from the haven that the first decided change in the nature of the path was manifest. At this point there was a great increase of its steepness, the gradient being so sharp that it was a labour to walk upright; and there were even rugged steps which bore the stamp of antiquity upon them, and were so hid with rocks and stones that the possibility of their having been in common usage was out of the question. The ravine itself was now comparatively shallow, the walls being nowhere more than twenty or thirty feet in height, and they fell back so much at their summits that the shrubs and trees of the higher plain were clearly visible; and this new state was unaltered until at last, with longer flight of the almost impossible steps, the path ended in a great door of wood, upon the top of which a row of iron spikes was set.

At the foot of the door Messenger stopped, and, motioning to Fisher to crouch down, he listened with a strained ear for some minutes. In this place, as lower in the gully, there was singing of wind, which seemed almost to cry in the hills; but the gale was intermittent, and when both of them had listened patiently for more than a quarter of an hour, the sound of dipping oars came up as from some deep chasm behind the barrier. It was a momentary sound, and was lost again almost as they heard it; yet its import seemed considerable, and was deepened at another fall of the blast, in which the crying of men one to the other was unmistakably audible.

"Hark!" said Messenger in a whisper; "could that be any thing else but a man hailing from a boat? We appear to have come upon a colony."

"I wonder what's behind the door?" asked Fisher naturally.

"I'll tell you in five minutes," said the other, "if it's to be told at all. Give me a back while I shin up the rock here."

It was no very difficult work to obtain foothold on the rock at either side of the decaying gate, and when the Prince had once come within reach of the spikes, he held to them easily, standing with one foot upon a natural ledge, and using a loop of the rope hitched over the iron as a support for the other. But Fisher continued below and when Messenger did not speak for many minutes, he began to conclude that he had fathomed the secret of the voices.

"Prince," asked he at length in a whisper which was half a shout, "can you see anything?"

"Not so loud!" replied the other, bending down to answer. "I think there are men below, but I'll tell you presently. Take another twist with the rope and pull yourself up. That's it! Now what do you make of it?"

Fisher was then beside him, placed much as he was, but at the opposite post of the gate. At the first glance he could see little beyond the spikes, for the darkness was intense, and a great wall of cliff loomed up at a distance of some fifty yards from their standing-place; but when the bank of cloud passed off the face of the moon, the whole scene was illumined sharply. It was now clear that their path was a disused one, but formerly had led unchecked to a great creek of the sea; and the two were now looking down to this creek, but from a vast height, since the path broke into the northern wall of the fjord almost at its summit. Thus it was that they saw, both above and below their standing-place, the glow of light upon a lagoon-like basin of water; but directly beneath them the view downward was obstructed by a projecting roof, as of some building hugging to the very sides of the rock; and the stone parapet of this was not more than ten feet below them.

I, when reading the papers which deal with these moments of episode, have often thought that the whole future of the men who survived the Semiramis might have been different had Messenger quieted the curiosity which led him to cross this gate. If the projection of the roof had permitted him to see straight down into the creek, there can be no doubt that he had returned immediately to the haven, and rested there until Kenner's coming was a fact, or at least until there had been news of him; but, being unable to see more than deeply fissured walls of whitish rock and the top of a building of stone, he confessed that he felt no surer of the situation than he did at the outset, and the needs of a reconnoitre compelled him to go on. And with this intention he turned to Fisher when a new sound of voices came up to them from the chasm, and, dropping from his position, he said—

"That decides it; we are going over to inspect. Send down the rope with a loop in it, and leave it there to get back quickly if there's need; but you must tread like a cat, and for the life of you don't speak!"

"It's a big risk!" exclaimed Fisher, whose foresight in this matter was sharper than the other's, and who feared exceedingly. But the man was impatient.

"There's no risk if you do exactly as I do," said he. "Give me your end of the rope, and help me up again."

He was at the gate again with this, and there he hitched the line to a whole spike, and, forcing two others from their place—for the gate was exceedingly rotten—he swung himself lightly down, and gave a sign to the lad that he should come upon the parapet, Fisher following him nimbly with a silent activity which was characteristic of his strength; and the two quickly stood together upon the roof, and looked down sheer to the tremendous depths below.

The scene then spread below them was one so unlooked-for and so weird and so strange that they may well have contemplated it in silence for many minutes. There was, as they had thought, a vast chasm with a lake of water at the foot of it; but its depth when thus looked down upon seemed infinitely beyond anything they had anticipated; and the uprising walls of rock presented sheer precipices, which were amazing in their grandeur and their height. Yet was this work of nature of poor interest for them by the side of the human activity to be observed below. At the landward end of the creek, where there was the mouth of a tunnel leading, as they supposed, from the lagoon into the very heart of the cliff, a fleet of row-boats and of luggers lay moored; and the crews passed to and fro to puny and wharf-like ledges upon either side of the great orifice, which was all lit up by the flare of torches and echoing with the hailing of seamen and the buzz of voices. What with the flickering light upon the dark water, and the reek of the smoke, and the sight of savage faces, and the shout of orders, and the forbidding aspect of the vast passage, the whole came upon the two men watching like a revelation, and they lay spellbound and speechless, unable to turn back for very curiosity, yet afraid almost to move, lest a false step should cost them their lives;

They were (as I say) perched upon the roof of a stone building, encased in the very side of the cliff; but they perceived, when they looked from this, that a comparatively wide path ran along the side of the ravine some thirty feet below them, and the house, or whatever it was, upon which they stood had a frontage to the path; yet from its dilapidation they judged that it was now not used, and that thus their position was less dangerous than they had at first thought. So plain was this at last that Messenger began boldly to crawl the whole length of the parapet, and when he had come to the far end, he, crouching down very close upon the stone, beckoned the lad to follow him; and there they came together upon a wooden trap-door, half lifted from its resting-place, and so permitting them, when the light was good enough, to see the interior of the room below them. But they beheld only a windowless and reeking chamber, barred, it is true, against egress with stout iron bars, yet having its door open and squeaking upon its hinges ; and they were about to turn away when Fisher's quick eyes discovered that which they had not seen, but which conveyed so dismal a warning.

"Look," said he; "I could swear that a man lay in the corner by the door!"

"I can see nothing," said Messenger; "you're discovering the shadow of the trap."

"No, it isn't that; shift the trap gently and you'll see it for yourself."

They moved the wooden lid of the aperture, and then the sight was plain. A body lay upon the floor—across the very threshold, in fact—but it was the body of a dead man; and when the light was full enough they saw that the man was Parker, the humble mate of the Semiramis.

"Good God!" said Messenger, "it's the mate; how did he get in this hole?"

"He must have been saved from the ship," said Fisher. "Poor old Parker; he was one of the few decent ones among them."

"Well," said the man, "he'll want decent burial, any way; and I'll tell you that it's just about time we went back again."

"As you say," said Fisher, and at that he turned to crawl back from the place; but the movement was a clumsy one, and, striking the wooden trap-door with his arm, he sent it clattering and whirling to the water below. No sooner had it fallen than a shout went up from the depths, and the two knew how great their folly had been; for while they talked dawn had come, and their figures were observed by the horde below, who yelled with ferocity at the very sight of them.