Part 45 (1/2)
They breasted the slope and arrived at the rock panting, after seven or eight minutes' climb. It was the same on which Sam Leggo had last seen the Lord Proprietor sitting with his gun across his knees. But why she had brought them to this spot the two men were as far as ever from guessing; for almost straight beneath them lay the sea.
After a minute's rest Vashti lowered herself over the western edge of the rock, at the same time warning them to follow with extreme caution; and so all three came to the ledge of the adit. But their business did not lie here. Indeed, in the darkness neither Sir Ommaney nor the Commandant observed the opening, and Vashti had no leisure to call their attention to it. Clambering, still to the left, across a boulder which fairly overhung the sea, she struck a match, lit the candle in her lantern, and held it up before a dark hole--a second adit--pierced in the cliff-side and running west, as the other ran south-by-east.
”Be careful, now!” she warned them again, and ducked her head as she entered the tunnel, which was scarcely more than five feet high. They stooped and followed down the slope of it for about thirty yards, and halted behind her as she waved the lantern over what appeared at first to be a terrific chasm, opening at her feet.
”Eli, ahoy! Ahoy, there!” she called.
”Ahoy!” the voice came up from the depths. ”Ahoy, there, Vashti!”
”I have brought the Commandant, with a friend--and the tackle. Shall I fix it here?”
”That's no work for you, my dear,” called up Eli. ”Let them come down if they've heads for it, and afterwards I can climb up and fix it. Or, stay! Let the one come down, and the other bide aloft, to help me.”
”Do you dare?” Vashti asked the Commandant, pointing down to the pit, and then with a wave of her lantern indicating the stairway by which he must descend. It was a ladder of rope, suspended from an iron bar driven into the solid rock about a foot above the floor-level on which they stood. It dangled down into darkness, and the Commandant perceived to his horror that its iron rungs lay close against the cliff.
”Surely you are never going down that way?” he asked.
But Vashti was already stooping to slip off her shoes.
”You need not follow unless you choose.”
”Where you go, I go. Let me lead the way.”
But while he unlaced and kicked off his boots she had already grasped the iron bar and swung herself out over the abyss, feeling with her toes for a rung and a good foothold.
”For my part,” said Sir Ommaney, controlling with some difficulty the tremor of his voice as he saw her anch.o.r.ed safely for the moment, ”I am content to smoke a pipe here and wait. For G.o.d's sake be careful you two!” he added, as the Commandant also gripped the bar, then a rung, and began to lower himself.
Far below the Commandant could see a light glimmering, drawing faint twinkles from the wet rock around him. Just beneath him he could hear Vashti's hands rhythmically catching at the rungs--down, down.... Once his feet slipped from the staves, and he hung for a moment by his hand-grip only. Twice Vashti spoke up to him, warning him to press a knee against the rock, and so make room for his toes to catch the rungs.... At length they reached a point where the ladder hung clear of the cliff; but here a hand from below caught it and held it steady.
”Nervous work, sir!” said Eli Tregarthen, as the Commandant, with a gasp of relief, felt his feet touch solid rock.
”But where are we?” demanded the Commandant; for close at hand sounded the boom of heavy waves.
”In Piper's Hole.”
The Commandant stared aloft. Slowly the explanation dawned on him. The adit, piercing its way from the cliff top, broke through the wall of the cave, high up, close to the roof. He turned, and his eyes followed Vashti, who had caught up Eli's lantern, and was picking her way across the rocky floor. Presently she bent to a kneeling posture, as the rays fell on what at first appeared to be a long bundle. He hurried after her, but stopped short with a cry.
”Sir Caesar!”
”Even so, my friend. Alive, thanks to our friends here; and, but for a shaking and a twisted ankle, sound as well as safe. Yes, and the ankle is mending, thanks to Miss Cara's skill and a plenty of salt-water bandages.”
The Lord Proprietor's face was pale as he leaned on his elbow and stared at the Commandant across the lantern. It was scratched, too, and scarred; but it was the face of a sound man.
”But how in the world----?”
”Easily enough. I was leaning over the cliff above here, with my gun beside me, when a piece of earth gave way under my head. I went down the slope head foremost, as I guess, and my coat must have caught in the gun's trigger-guard. At any rate, it went off, and by the mercy of Heaven without wounding me; but either the noise of it stunned me or the fall must have knocked me foolish, for tumbling among the bushes that grow in the hollow above the cave's entrance, I had not the sense to catch hold, but slid through them, and clean over the edge into the sea.”
”Eh? But pardon me, how can you possibly remember this?” stammered the Commandant.
”I saw it,” said Vashti, quietly.