Part 7 (1/2)

”Tis for that very reason,' says Elzevir, 'that I want the firelock These s to stop such wicked rascals on a lone hill-side Couard thee; they will not hurt a boy'

He had the guinea between his finger and thu to be withstood So we gained a sorry s, and powder, and the boy walked off over the furrohistling with his hand in his pocket, and a guinea and a crown-piece in his hand

His whistle sounded innocent enough, yet Iat my bloody foot; and so I said asthe boy was simple and harh the bra seen-and there waslike any bird so long as Elzevir's head was above the wall; but when Elzevir sat down, the boy gave a careful look round, and seeing no one watching anyand made off as fast as heels would carry hiuessed ere, and was off to warn the hue and cry; but before Elzevir was on his feet again, the boy was out of sight, over the hill-brow

'Let us o, and the heat is past already We must have slept three hours or more, for thou art but a sorry watchhs, and for thee the Posse ht owls'

With that he tookas much as possible under the brow of the hill and in the shelter of the walls We had slept longer than we thought, for the sun estering fast, and though the rest had refreshede started again Elzevir was still walking strongly, in spite of the heavy burden he carried, and in less than half an hour I knew, though I had never been there before, ere in the land of the old h I knew little of these quarries, and certainly was in evil plight to take note of anything at that time, yet afterwards I learnt much about them Out of such excavations comes that black Purbeck Marble which you see in old churches in our country, and I aland as well And the way ofvery steeply down into the earth, like a well turned askew, till you reach fifty, seventy, or perhaps one hundred feet deep Then froes or tunnels, h, but so These quarries were o, soh some are still worked in other parts of Purbeck, those at the back of Anvil Point have been disused beyond the e fields, and the face of the country was covered onceon the brighter green of spring This turf was not smooth, but hummocky, for under it lay heaps of worthless stone and reen vesth it left so out at the top of a ables left of the cottages of the old quarryarden-folds, and here and there still stood a forlorn gooseberry-bush, or a stunted plum-or apple-tree with its branches all swept eastward by the up-Channel gales As for the quarry shafts thereen turf, and down theht of steep-cut steps, with a slide of soap-stone at the side, on which the marble blocks were once hauled up by wooden winches Down these steps no feet ever walked now, for not only were suffocating gases said to beset the bottom of the shafts, but es below lurked evil spirits and des, told me that when St Aldhelan Gods under a ban deep in these passages, but that the worst of all the creas a certain demon called the Mandrive, atched over the best of the black ht only be used in churches or for graves, for if it were not for this holy purpose, the Mandrive would have power to strangle the man that hewed it

It was by the side of one of these old shafts that Elzevir laidall the little unevennesses of the turf; and the sward crept over the edges of the hole, and every crack and crevice in steps and slide was green with ferns The green ferns shrouded the walls of the hole, and ruddy brown braloo at the bottom of the pit

Elzevir drew a deep breath or two of the cool evening air, like a h a difficult trial

'There,' he said, 'this is Joseph's Pit, and here we et to the bottoh at Posse, and hue and cry, and at the King's Crown itself They cannot search all the quarries, and are not like to search any of the much on tales of the Mandrive Ay, and such tales are true enough, for there lurk gases at the bottoo down And if they do come down this Joseph's Pit, we still have nineteen chances in a score they cannot thread the workings But last, if they come down, and thread the path, there is this pistol and a rusty matchlock; and before they come to where we lie, we can hold the troop at bay and sell our lives so dear they will not care to buy them'

We waited a few an to descend the steps, back first, as one goes down a hatchway The sun was setting in a heavy bank of clouds just as we began to go down, and I could not help re how I had seen it set over peaceful Moonfleet only twenty-four hours ago; and how far off ere now, and how long it was likely to be before I saw that dear village and Grace again

The stairs were still sharp cut and little worn, but Elzevir paid great care to his feet, lest he should slip on the ferns and rown When we reached the brah I heard the thorns tearing in his coat, he shoved the froht Thus he came safe without stuot there all was dark, but he stepped off into a narrow opening on the right hand, and walked on as if he knew the way I could see nothing, but perceived that ere passing through endless galleries cut in the solid rock, high enough, for the ht, but sometimes so low as to force him to bend down and carry me in a very constrained attitude Only twice did he set , while he took out his tinder-box and lit a th the darkness becae cave or roo at the far end At the same time I felt a colder breath and fresh salt smell in the air that told me ere very near the sea

CHAPTER 11

THE SEA-CAVE

The dull loneness, the black shade, That these hanging vaults haveon these hollow caves-Wither He set me down in one corner, where was some loose dry silver-sand upon the floor, which others had perhaps used for a resting-place before 'Thou must lie here for a month or two, lad,' he said; 'tis a et straw to all day, nor had Elzevir, yet I felt no hunger, only a giddiness and burning thirst like that which came upon me when I was shut in the Mohune vault So 'twas veryfrom the roof into a little pool upon the floor, and Elzevir ave a full drink of it that was icy-cool and led wine of France

And after that I knew little that happened for ten days or more, for fever had hold of me, and as I learnt afterwards, I talked wild and could scarce be restrained fros that Elzevir had put uponAnd all that time he nursed me as tenderly as any mother could her child, and never left the cave except when he was forced to seek food But after the fever passed it left me very thin, as I could see from hands and arms, and weaker than a baby; and I used to lie the whole day, not thinking iven th was gradually returning Elzevir had found a battered sea-chest up on Peveril Point, and fro his own shi+rt for bandages The sand-bed too was made more soft and easy with some armfuls of straw, and in one corner of the cave was a little pile of driftwood and an iron cooking-pot And all these things had Elzevir got by foraging of nights, using great care that none should see hiht about; but soon he contrived to give Ratsey word of where ere, and after that the sexton fended for us There were none even of the landers kneas become of us, save only Ratsey; and he never caht in one of the ruined cottages a half-mile frothe country; for though at first the Posse took back Maskew's dead body and said weto be found of us, yet afterwards a farht a tale of how he had co under a wall, and how one had a bloody foot and leg, and how the other sprung upon hile wrenched his master's rook-piece from his hands, rifled his pocket of a powder-horn, and made off with them like a hare towards Corfe And as to Maskew, some of the soldiers said that Elzevir had shot hi killed by a stray bullet of one of his own men on the hill-top; but for all that they put a head-price on Elzevir of 50, and 20 for me, so we had reason to lie close It ht at the door when Elzevir told o was to be run; for the Posse had been ordered to be at hoar Head at four in thewould have been taken had it not been for the Gulderat the Lobster

All this Elzevir learnt froh in truth I had as lief not heard it, for 'tis no pleasant thing to see one's head wrote down so low as 20 And what I wanted most to know, namely how Grace fared and how she took the bad news of her father's death, I could not hear, for Elzevir said nothing, and I was shy to ask him

Nohen I cas, I found that the place in which I lay was a cave soht-cut walls showed that men had once hewed stone therefroh which we had coave on to a stone ledge eight fathoh-water mark For the cave was cut out just inside that iron cliff-face which lies between St Alban's Head and Swanage But the cliffs here are different froh as hoar Head nor of chalk, but standing for the most part only an hundred or an hundred and fifty feet above the sea, and showing towards it a stern face of solid rock But though they rise not so high above the water, they go down a long way below it; so that there is fifty fathoood craft out of reckoning in fog, or on a pitch-dark night, has run full against that frowning wall, and perished, shi+p and creithout a soul to hear their cries Yet, though the rock looks hard as ada of the wave has worn it out below, and even with the slightest swell there is a dull and distant booe in those cavernous deeps; and when the wind blows fresh, each roller s rock tree of that rock-face that our cave opened, and sometimes on a fine day Elzevir would carry ht sunseen For this ledge was carved out so they could lower the stone by pulleys to boats lying underneath, and perhaps haul up a keg or two by the way of ballast, asin the rock

Such was this gallery; and as for the inside of the cave, 'twas a great empty room, with a white floor made up of broken stone-dust trodden hard of old till one would say it was plaster; and dry, without those sweaty damps so often seen in such places-save only in one corner a land-spring dropped fro into a little hollow in the floor This basin had been scooped out of set purpose, with a gutter seaward for the overflow, and round it and on the wet patch of the roof above grew a garden of ferns and other clinging plants

The weeks hts were no longer cold, as the sun gathered power And with the warh I dared not yet stand, es now and then, which Elzevir said were caused by the bone setting And then he would put a poultice rass upon the place, and once walked al one out and in so many times in safety, yet I was always ill at ease when he ay, lest he ht fall into soht of ould corieved me, but only care for hirizzled giant, and love hiuileonly my aunt's red Prayer-book that I thrust into my bosom the afternoon that I left Moonfleet, and Blackbeard's locket For that locket hung always round my neck; and I often had the parchment out and read it; not that I did not know it now by heart, but because reading it seehts, for the last time I had read it hen I saw her in the Manor woods

Elzevir and I had often talked over as to be done when e to St Malo in the Bonaventure, and there lie hid till the pursuit against us should have ceased For though 'tartilish were as brothers in the contraband, and the shi+ppers would give us bit and sup, and glad to, as long as we had need of them But of this I need not say more, because 'twas but a project, which other events came in to overturn

Yet 'twas this very errand, namely, to fix with the Bonaventure's men the tione out, on the day of which I shall now speak He was to go to Poole, and left our cave in the afternoon, thinking it safe to keep along the cliff-edge even in the daylight, and to strike across country when dusk ca froale My leg was now so strong that I could walk across the cave with the help of a stout blackthorn that Elzevir had cut e to watch the growing sea There I sat doithrock, in such a place that I could see up-Channel and yet shelter fro wall of rock showed grey with orange-brown patches and a darker line of sea-weed at the base like the under strake of a boat's belly, for the tide was but beginning tobefore the wind, and through it I could see the white-backed rollers lifting over Peveril Point; while all along the cliff-face the sea-birds thronged the ledges, and sat huddled in snowy lines, knowing thein the elements