Part 17 (1/2)
As the volumes of smoke issuing from his mouth showed that the flame had done its duty, he held the match aloft, and looked down in the smiling, upturned face of the lad, scrutinizing the handsome countenance, as long as the tiny bit of pine held out.
”Yes, it's your own lovely self, as Barney McDougan's wife obsarved, when he came home drunk, with one eye punched out and his head cracked.
Do ye know that while I was surveying your swate face I saw something behind ye?”
”No. What was it?” demanded Fred, with a start and shudder, looking back in the darkness.
”Oh! it was nothing that will harm ye: I think there be some bits of wood there that kin be availed of in the way of kindling a fire, and that's what I misses more than anything else, as me mither used to say when she couldn't find the whisky-bottle. Bestir yourself, me laddy, and a.s.sist me in getting together some sc.r.a.ps.”
The Irishman was not mistaken in his supposition. Groping around, they found quite a quant.i.ty of sticks and bits of wood. All of these were dry, and the best kind of kindling stuff that could be obtained. Mickey was never without his knife, and he whittled several of these until sure they would take the flame from a match when he made the essay.
The fire caught readily, and, carefully nursed, it spread until it roared and crackled like an old-fas.h.i.+oned camp-fire. As it rose higher and higher, and the heavy gloom was penetrated and lit up by the vivifying rays, Mickey and Fred used their eyes to the best of their ability.
The cave seemed to stretch away into fathomless darkness in every direction, excepting one, which was toward the waterfall or cascade.
This appeared to be at one side, instead of running through the centre.
The dark walls could be seen on the other side of the stream, and the gleam and glitter of the water, for some distance both above and below the plunge.
”Do you obsarve anything new?” asked Mickey.
”Nothing more than what I told you,” replied Fred, supposing he referred to the extent of the cavern.
”I have larned something,” said the man, significantly.
”What's that?”
”Somebody's been here ahead of us.”
”How do you know that?”
”I've got the proof. Will you note that, right there before your eyes?”
As he spoke, he pointed to the kindling-wood, or fuel, of which they had collected considerable, while there was plenty more visible around them. Fred was not sure that he understood him, so he still looked questioningly toward him.
”Wood doesn't grow in such places as this, no more than ye can find praties sprouting out of the side of a tea kettle; but then it might have been pitched down the hole above, or got drifted into it without anybody helping, if it wasn't for the fact that there's been a camp-fire here before.”
”How do you make that out, Mickey?”
The Irishman stooped down and picked up one of the pieces of wood, which was waiting to be thrown upon the camp fire. Holding it out, he showed that the end was charred.
”That isn't the only stick that's built after the same shtyle, showing that this isn't the first camp-fire that was got up in these parts.
There's been gintlemen here before to-day, and they must have had some way of coming and going that we haven't diskivered as yet.”
There seemed nothing unlikely in this supposition of Mickey's, who picked up his rifle from where he had left it lying on the ground, and stared inquiringly around in the gloom.
”I wonder whether there be any wild animals prowling around?”
”I don't think that could be; for there couldn't many of them fall through that hole that let us in, and if they did, they would soon die.”
”That minds me that you hinted something about feeling the cravings of hunger, and I signified to you that I had something for ye about my clothes; and so I have, if it isn't lost.”