So seizing each of us an oar, the sea being perfectly calm and a full tide lapsing as smoothly upon the cliffs as the water in a tub wherein good wives wash their duds, we risked the matter and rowed in closer to the rock. We sought if by good chance there might be found some inlet where we could land, or some cave which might conceal us from the cruel men who were seeking our lives.
Nor was our adventuring in vain, for as we cautiously advanced into the blackness, the wall of the cliff seemed to retire before us, so that the prow of the boat actually appeared to push it steadily back. A denser darkness, a very night of Egypt, surrounded us. Gradually the noise of the pursuers dulled, sank, and died away. We lost sight of the grey, uneasy plain of the sea behind us, and continued to advance through a long water passage walled with rock, the sides of which we could sometimes feel with our hands and sometimes fail to touch with our oars. This I took at the time to be a marvellous dispensation of Providence on our behalf, as without doubt it was. But now we know that all that shoreward country, owing to the abundance of soft stone by the seaside, is honeycombed with caves, so that it was well-nigh impossible to miss at least one of these in every half mile of cliff all about the Heads of Benerard. Yet that we should strike this one of all others appeared a thing worthy of admiration, as presently you shall hear, and showed the same dispensing and favourable Providence which has throughout been on the side of Culzean and against our enemies of Bargany.
Marjorie and Nell still sat together in the stern, but so dense was the dark that we could see nothing of them. The Dominie and I took our oars from the rullocks and pushed onward into the cave, hoping to come in time to some wider space, where we could either disembark or find a passage out upon the land above us.
And so presently we came to a place wonderful enough in itself, yet no more than the gateway to other and greater marvels.
The waves which had scarcely been visible out on the open sea ran into the cave at regular intervals, and in the narrow places formed themselves into a considerable swell of water. Before us we could hear them break with a noise like thunder upon some hidden strand or beach. This somewhat terrified us in that place of horrid darkness, for the noise was loud as is a waterfall in the time of spate, the echoing of the cave and the many contracted passages and wide halls deceiving the ear.
So our boat, being poised upon the crest of one of these smooth steeps of water which rolled onward into the cave, advanced swiftly into a more spacious cavern, where the oar could be used without touching the rock at either side. The sounds now came back to us also from high aloft, and we had the feeling of much air and a certain spacious vastness above us. Yet the imprisoning darkness, confused with the lashing of the waves, wrought a kind of invincible melancholy which weighed down all our spirits.
Presently, however, the prow of the boat took the slushy sand in a coign more retired, where the waves did not, as in other places, fall with an arching dash, but rather lapsed with a gentler wash as upon a regular beach. Being in the bow, I lost no time in leaping ashore, and in a few moments I had the boat fast to a natural pier of rock, behind which the water was quiet as in a mill pond.
Here in the darkness we helped each other out, and feeling ourselves now somewhat more safe from our enemies, we shook one another by the hand and made many congratulation on our escape, which had indeed been marvellous.
Even thus we waited for the day to reveal to us whether there were any passage by which we could ascend from the deeps of the Cimmerian pit wherein we were enclosed, without adventuring out again in our boat upon the water, where our enemies watched for us.
We drew close together upon the rocky pier, and Marjorie told us of her escape from the Auchendraynes, the strange tale of which shall hereafter be given at length in its own place. Also she confirmed the message which she had sent to her sister, that she had discovered all the wickedness and certain guilt of the Mures in the death of her father, and in many other crimes. So we saw before us in plain case their condemnation, if once we could escape from this snare and bring their iniquity to light before the King and the Council. Yet all the while it was a marvel to me how Marjorie had so completely forgotten James Mure the younger, who was her wedded husband, even though she had never rendered to him the love and duty of a wife.
But we were by no means yet won out of the wood. And, at the best, our case was not a particularly comfortable one. The Dominie and I had, indeed, provided Marjorie with such wrappings and covertures as were in our power, which we had brought with us from the isle. But we had mainly to trust to the virtues of the strong waters of France, which the Dominie always carried about with him, as well as to the mildness of the night, that she should take no harm from her fearful plunge from the cliffs into the salt water.
But it is certain that the perturbation of one's spirit at such a time is so great, that many things pass without penalty to the health which at another season might induce disease and death.
Presently we found that our boat was being left high and dry, the water ebbing swiftly away from us towards the mouth of the cave. We had, as it happened, entered at the height of the tide, and now the water was upon the turn. But this affected us little, for we judged that either it would go so far back that we might find a way of escape by clambering over the rocks out upon the land; or else, at the worst, we knew that, by waiting till the next tide, we should be able to return the way we had come. At all events, for that time at least, we thought ourselves to have outwitted our pursuers and to stand no longer in their danger.
But we were briskly to learn another way of it, for the oftenest slip is made upon the threshold of safety.
Marjorie and Nell bore themselves through all these dangers and discomforts with the greatest courage. Never had this come home to me so strongly before, for the maid's shamefacedness had died out of Marjorie Kennedy; and now she seemed wholly set with a fierce jealousy of hate to compass the punishment of her father's enemies.
The water being in this manner retired, and our boat lying high and dry upon a shelving beach, I proposed that the Dominie and myself should attempt some exploration of the place where we found ourselves—while we left Nell and her sister by the boat to make such dispositions of their cleading as would countervale the discomfort of Marjorie's rescue from death.
So the Dominie and I felt with our hands all round the wide amphitheatre which had so lately been filled with the salt water. We had no difficulty in discovering the narrow passage by which we had come, for down its narrow gullet the water was now retreating with great swiftness. But we seemed to be at the sack's end in every other way, so that we looked for nothing else but having to return to the same place, and in the same way by which we came, after our enemies had retired. So swiftly did the tide run back, that it seemed as if it might be possible for us to walk out upon our own feet. And so indeed we did, but in a very strange fashion.
For in one of my gropings I came upon a projection of the rock, which caught my foot and threw me forward upon my face. As I fell, my hands touched something like a flight of rough steps which led up from the sanded floor of the cavern. Without waiting to call out to Dominie Mure I mounted, with my heart beating fast with anticipation, and at the top I came into a narrower passage than any we had yet entered, which led me forward a long way. As I went the air felt unaccountably lighter. It smelled most like a well-fired room, dry and pleasant, so that I waited only to ascertain that the passage ended in another apartment before going back to communicate my fortunate discovery to Marjorie and Nell.
When I reached the boat I found that, by the skilful management of her sister, Marjorie had been made somewhat more comfortable, and that the Dominie on his part had discovered nothing of importance, of which I was glad, for it became me to be the leader of our expedition. So I bade him take his weapons, and with what provender we could carry upon our backs we proceeded all of us together to the rocky stairway leading to the drier inner cave.
The Dominie had as usual brought his pipes over his shoulder, from which, indeed, he refused to be parted even for a moment. And but for the fear of the noise reaching our enemies, I think that there and then he would have played us both reels and strathspeys—that is, if we had given him any encouragement, so pleased was he, and, indeed, all of us, to leave the dark cavern and oozy sand upon which we had first landed.
We were not long in ascending the stairs, and, as I had foretold, we found ourselves speedily in the warmer and drier air, like that of a habited house, which was so great a change from the dripping damp of the lower sea-cave that we rejoiced greatly, though quite unable to discover the cause.
Yet there was something—we knew not what—about the inner cavern which took us all by the throat. Indeed, we had not gone far when Marjorie Kennedy gasped for breath and said, 'Let us go back! I do not like the place!
But this I took to be no more than the dashing of her spirit by the adventures of the night, and the terrors through which, as she had already told us, she had come in the dreary and dangerous house of Auchendrayne.
For the passage broadened out into a wider hall with a firm floor of hard earth, as if it had been beaten or trampled. We had hardly been in this place longer than a few moments when a strangely persistent and pervading smell began to impress us with the deadliest loathing. It was sharp, pungent, and familiar. Yet could none of us tell whence it came, nor in what place we had smelled it before.
'I am faint unto death,' said Marjorie, leaning heavily on me. 'Let me go back, Launcelot, while I can.'
But this, for the sake of the dryness and comfort, I was not willing to do. So, stumbling now over one thing and now over another in the darkness, I made shift to find a further passage.
I chanced to put down my hand, when my foot struck something heavier and more massive than before, and, lo! to my horror, I touched the side of a wooden tub or vat. And scarce had I moved from the place where I was, before something cold and soft brushed my face, as if it had been suspended from the roof. My heart trembled, for we were plainly in a place of habitation of some unknown and terrible sort.
'Stand still where you are,' I cried to my companions. For I was afraid that they also might come against one of these obstructions, which were good evidence of others having been in this abode of horror and darkness as well as ourselves.
Immediately I set to the groping again, and went stumbling from one thing to another till I came to a branching passage which ascended away from the hall. And since here, in the roomy alcove high above the floor of the cave, there were (so far as I could find) none of the vats or other furniture which I had encountered about the sides of the greater cave, I decided to use it as a place of temporary shelter.
So I made my way back to where they were all standing close together, and I pinched the Dominie's arm in token that he was to ask no questions. Then very slowly and stealthily we felt our way to the little alcove which I had found. And as often as I stumbled against anything, I pretended to clatter some of the stuff which I carried upon my back, having laden myself with it at the boat. And so passed the matter off.
At last we came to the hiding-place which had been my latest discovery, and found that the rock was cut, as it had been, into seats all round about, while the path ascended upwards at the back yet higher into the stone, by which I judged that we had not yet come to the end of the cavern. Here in the high alcove or gallery above the main cave we accommodated ourselves, and disposed our belongings as well as we could for the darkness. The Dominie set himself to arrange them, while Nell and Marjorie lay covered up together in our plaids upon the stone bench which ran about the place, and which appeared to have been hewn out at some past time by the rude art of man. But I myself, to whom it came as natural to be stirring as to breathe, set about making a further exploration.
Now my disappointment was great when I found that we had indeed come to the limit of the cavern. Search which way I would, my hands encountered nothing but rock. Nevertheless, I continued my circuit, standing upon the stone ledge and groping above me, for it was possible that there was some fresh passage which from this alcove might lead to the outer air.
Suddenly, while I was searching with my hands at the top of the steps of stone, and, without the least warning, my finger tips fell upon something which felt colder than the stone. I touched metal—then the projection of a keyhole, then the iron corners of a chest. I ran my hand along the pattern of the metal bands which bound the lid. What wonder that my heart beat vehemently, for I knew in that moment that I had my hand upon the Treasure of Kelwood!