Part 11 (1/2)

Kalliope rowed easily and was well content to go on rowing all day.

She was almost perfectly happy. Fuller's sweets were a revelation of unimagined delight to her, and she could gaze without interruption at the Queen. There was little in the world left for her heart to desire.

The girls rowed round the sh.o.r.e of the bay. The shadow of the white cliffs was grateful. The Queen delighted to drag her hands through the cool water. The sound of its lapping against the steep rocks soothed her. She liked to peer into the blue depths. When she looked up it was pleasant to meet Kalliope's soft brown eyes and to see the ready smile broaden on the girl's lips. Now and then, laughing, she leaned forward and pressed a chocolate into Kalliope's mouth. The Queen's fingers were often wet with salt water, but that did not spoil the flavour of the sweets for Kalliope.

The boat slipped past high sheer cliffs, past little coves, on whose sand men's feet had surely never trodden, past the mouths of great caves, gloomy, mysterious, from the depths of which came a hollow murmuring of water. The caves had a strange fascination for the Queen. Her eyes followed their steep walls up to the arches of their high dripping roofs, tried to pierce the dim and darkening shades within, gazed down through the water at round boulders and flat shelves of rock, seen magnified and strangely blue in the depths. At first she was half fearful and would not allow the boat to be taken near the mouths of the caves she pa.s.sed. At the mouth of one cave Kalliope shouted suddenly. Echoes answered her from within, repeating her shout and repeating it till the cries seemed to come from far off, from the very centre of the island. Opposite another cave Kalliope shouted again and banged her oars against the gunwhale of the boat. A flock of grey birds, some kind of rock pigeons, flew out, making a sound of rus.h.i.+ng with their wings. The Queen became, little by little, less fearful and more curious.

They came at last to a cavern with a wide entrance. The daylight shone far inside. The water was blue far into the depths, not purple or black as it seemed to be just inside the narrower caves. The Queen signed to Kalliope. The boat turned, slipped into the wide entrance, rose and fell upon the swelling water under the high roof. Kalliope rowed on. For awhile she rowed with her oars full stretch on their rowlocks. Then the walls narrowed more and more till she must s.h.i.+p her oars. The boat glided on slowly from the impulse of her last stroke.

The walls narrowed still. Kalliope stood up. Pus.h.i.+ng against one wall and then the other with an oar grasped midway in her hands she drove the boat forward. Suddenly the s.p.a.ce widened. The roof was higher, almost out of sight. The boat pa.s.sed into a huge cavern very dimly lit. The Queen gasped, sat open-mouthed in breathless silence for a moment; then looking round she saw that the cavern was lit by several thin shafts of pale-blue light. More than one of the caves whose entrance the boat had pa.s.sed led into this great cavern. Kalliope, laughing, plunged an oar into the waters. It shone silver like some long fish. The Queen gazed at it. She plunged her own arm in and saw it turn silver too.

The water was still deep and seemed scarcely to shallow at all as the boat moved forward into the depths of the cavern. Suddenly the Queen saw before her a steep beach covered with large, round stones. The boat grounded. Kalliope leaped on sh.o.r.e. She held her hand out to the Queen. The two girls stood together on the beach. Kalliope, still holding her Queen's hand, led the way upwards, away from the boat and the water. Her bare feet moved lightly over the stones which s.h.i.+fted and rolled under the Queen's shoes, making a hollow sound. Echoes multiplied the sound until the air was full of hollow mutterings, like the smothered reports of very distant guns. Kalliope led on.

To her the way was familiar. The dim light and hollow noises were commonplace. At last she stopped and with a little cry pointed forward.

The Queen looked. Her eyes were well accustomed now to the dim light.

She saw.

There in the depths of the mysterious cavern, it would not have surprised the girl to see strange things. She would scarcely have been astonished if Kalliope had pointed to a group of mermaids combing damp hair with long curved sh.e.l.ls. Old Triton with his wreathed horn would have been in place, almost an expected vision, if he had sat on a throne of rock, sea carved, with panting dolphins at his feet. The Queen saw no such beings. What she did see called from her a little cry of surprise, made her cling suddenly to Kalliope's arm.

”Oh!” she said. ”Oh, Kalliope, what are they?”

”d.a.m.n boxes,” said Kalliope.

Before the eyes of the Queen, stretching along the back of the cave, was a long row of large galvanized iron tanks, strongly made, with heavily studded seams, each with a great copper tap. They were ranged in a most orderly line, like some grey monsters carefully drilled.

They were all exactly the same width, the same height, and the copper spouts exactly matched each other.

”d.a.m.ned boxes,” said Kalliope cheerfully.

Any one looking at them might almost have agreed with her. They were not precisely boxes. They were cisterns, tanks, but they gave the impression of being d.a.m.nable and d.a.m.ned.

”But,” said the Queen, ”what are they for? What's the meaning of them? How did they get here? Who brought them?”

Kalliope did not understand the questions, but guessed at what her mistress asked. She had been learning English for three days only. She had been quick to pick up certain words from the Queen, words in frequent use between them. But in face of questionings like these the vocabulary of millinery and hair dressing failed her hopelessly. She fell back on what she had picked up from the sailors' lips and from her brothers who were already enriching the island language with English slang.

”Blighters,” she said, ”mucky s.h.i.+p--go row, go row--d.a.m.n boxes.”

In spite of the pale light and the sinister mystery of the tanks in front of her the Queen laughed aloud. The pursuing echoes made Kalliope's English irresistibly absurd. Then she pondered.

Men--whether ”blighters” in Kalliope's mouth conveyed reproach or were simply a synonym for men she did not know--men in a s.h.i.+p--”mucky”

described the s.h.i.+p as little probably as ”d.a.m.n boxes” described the packing-cases of furniture or ”b.l.o.o.d.y” her trunks of clothes. Men in a s.h.i.+p had brought the tanks, had rowed them--”go row” was plain enough--ash.o.r.e in boats.

”But who,” said the Queen, ”and why?”

Kalliope was beaten. Who and why were too much for her, as indeed they have been for people far wiser than she. Are not all theology and all philosophy attempts, and for the most part vain attempts, to deal with just those two words, who and why?

”Blighters,” said Kalliope, and the echoes repeated her words with emphasis, ”blighters, blighters, blighters,” till the Queen came to believe it.

Then Kalliope, memory wakened in her, grew suddenly hopeful. She began to hum a tune, very softly at first, making more than one false start; but getting it nearly right at last. The Queen recognized it. She had heard it a hundred times in old days at prayers in the chapel of her college. It was a hymn tune. The words came back to her at once.