7
an odd discovery
if it had not been for joe, life at craggy-tops, once the children had settleddown to their daily tasks, would have been very pleasant. there seemed somuch to do that was fun – swimming in the sheltered cove, where the waterwas calm, was simply lovely. exploring the damp dark caves in the cliffswas fun. fishing from the rocks with a line was also very exciting, becausequite big fish could be caught that way.
but joe seemed to spoil everything, with his scowls and continuedinterference. he always seemed to appear wherever the children were. ifthey bathed, his sour face appeared round the rocks. if they fished, he camescowling out on the rocks and told them they were wasting their time.
‘oh, leave us alone, joe,’ said philip impatiently. ‘you act as if you wereour keeper! for goodness’ sake leave us to do what we want to do. we’renot doing any harm.’
‘miss polly said to me to keep an eye on you all,’ said joe sulkily. ‘shesaid to me not to let you get into danger, see.’
‘no, i don’t see,’ said philip crossly. ‘all i can see is that you keeppopping up wherever we are and spoiling things for us. don’t keep pryingon us. we don’t like it.’
lucy-ann giggled. she thought it was brave of philip to talk to the bigman like that. he certainly was a nuisance. what fun they would have hadif he had been jolly and good-tempered! they could have gone fishing andsailing in his boat. they could have fished properly with him. they couldhave gone out in the car and picnicked.
‘but all because he’s so sour and bad-tempered we can’t do any of thosethings,’ said lucy-ann. ‘why, we might even have tried to sail out to theisle of gloom to see if there were many birds there, as jack so badly wantsto do, if only joe had been nice.’
‘well, he’s not nice, and we’ll never go to gloom, and if we did get there,i bet there wouldn’t be any birds on such a desolate place,’ said philip.
‘come on – let’s explore that big cave we found yesterday.’
it really was fun exploring the caves on the shore. some of them ran veryfar back into the cliff. others had holes in the roofs, that led to upper caves.
philip said that in olden times men had used the caves for hiding in, or forstoring smuggled goods. but there was nothing to be seen in them nowexcept seaweed and empty shells.
‘i wish we had a good torch,’ said jack, as his candle was blown out forthe sixth time that morning. ‘i shall soon have no candles left. if only therewas a shop round the corner where we could slip along and buy a torch! iasked joe to get me one when he went shopping in the car, but hewouldn’t.’
‘oooh – here’s a most enormous starfish!’ said philip, holding his candledown to the floor of the damp cave. ‘do look – it’s a giant one, i’m sure.’
dinah gave a shriek. she hated creepy-crawly things as much as philipliked them. ‘don’t touch it, and don’t bring it near me.’
but philip was a tease, and he picked up the great starfish, with its longfive fingers, and walked over to dinah with it. she flew into a furious rage.
‘you beast! i told you not to bring it near me. i’ll kill it if you do.’
‘you can’t kill starfish,’ said philip. ‘if you cut one in half it grows newfingers, and, hey presto, it is two starfishes instead of one. so there! have alook at it, dinah – smell it – feel it.’
philip pushed the great clammy thing near to his sister’s face. reallyalarmed, dinah hit out, and gave philip such a push that he reeled,overbalanced and fell headlong to the floor of the cave. his candle wentout. there was a shout from philip, then a curious slithering noise – andsilence.
‘hi, tufty! are you all right?’ called jack, and held his candle high. tohis enormous astonishment, philip had completely disappeared. there wasthe starfish on the seaweedy ground – but no philip was beside it.
the three children stared in the greatest amazement at clumps of seaweedhanging from the walls of the cave, spreading over the ground. whereverhad philip gone?
dinah was scared. she had certainly meant to give philip a hard blow –but she hadn’t meant him to disappear off the face of the earth. she gave ayell.
‘philip! are you hiding? come out, idiot!’
a muffled voice came from somewhere. ‘hi! – where am i?’
‘that’s tufty’s voice,’ said jack. ‘but where is he? he’s nowhere in thiscave.’
the children put their three candles together and looked round the small,low-roofed, seaweedy cave. it smelt very dank and musty. philip’s voicecame again from somewhere, sounding rather frightened.
‘i say! where am i?’
jack advanced cautiously over the slippery seaweed to where philip hadfallen when dinah had struck him. then suddenly he seemed to lose hisfooting, and, to the surprise of the watching girls, he too disappeared,seeming to sink down into the floor of the seaweedy cave.
by the wavering light of their two candles the girls tried to see what hadhappened to jack. then they saw the explanation of the mystery. the frondsof seaweed hid an opening in the floor of the cave, and when the boys hadput their weight on to the seaweed covering the hole, they had slippedbetween the fronds down into some cave below. how strange!
‘that’s where they went,’ said dinah, pointing to a dark space betweenthe seaweed covering that part of the floor. ‘i hope they haven’t broken theirlegs. however shall we get them out?’
jack had fallen on top of poor philip, almost squashing him. kiki, leftbehind in the cave above, let out an ear-piercing screech. she hated thesedark caves, but always came with jack. now he had suddenly gone, and theparrot was alarmed.
‘shut up, kiki,’ said dinah, jumping in fright at the screech. ‘look,lucy-ann, there’s a hole in the cave floor there, just between that thickseaweed. walk carefully, or you’ll disappear too. hold up my candle as wellas your own and i’ll see if i can make out exactly what has happened.’
what had happened was really quite simple. first philip had gone downthe hole into a cave below, and then jack had fallen on top of him. philipwas feeling frightened and bruised. he clutched jack and wouldn’t let go.
‘what’s happened?’ he said.
‘hole in the cave floor,’ said jack, putting out his hands and feelinground to see how big the cave was they had fallen into. he touched rockywalls on each side of him at once. ‘i say – this is a mighty small cave. hi,girls, put the candles over the hole so that we can see something.’
a lighted candle now appeared above the boys and they were able to seea little.
‘we’re not in a cave. we’re in a passage,’ said jack, astonished. ‘at least,we’re at the beginning of a passage. i wonder where it goes to . . . right intothe cliff, i suppose.’
‘hand us down a candle,’ called philip, feeling better now. ‘oh, goodness– here’s kiki.’
‘can’t you shut the door?’ said kiki, in a sharp voice, sitting hard onjack’s shoulder, glad to be with her master again. she began to whistle, andthen told herself not to.
‘shut up, kiki,’ said jack. ‘look, philip – there really is a passageleading up there – awfully dark and narrow. and what a smell there is!
dinah, pass that candle down quickly, do!’
dinah at last managed to hand down a lighted candle. she lay flat on theseaweedy cave floor, and just managed to pass the candle down through thehole. jack held it up. the dark passage looked mysterious and strange.
‘what about exploring it?’ said philip, feeling excited. ‘it looks as if itought to go below craggy-tops itself. it’s a secret passage.’
‘more likely a short crack in the cliff rocks that leads nowhere at all,’
said jack. ‘kiki, don’t peck my ear so hard. we’ll go into the open air soon.
hi, you girls! we think we’ll go up this funny passage. are you coming?’
‘no, thanks,’ said lucy-ann at once, who didn’t at all like the sound of aseaweedy passage that ran, dark and narrow, through the cliffs. ‘we’ll stayhere till you come back. don’t be long. we’ve only got one candle now.
have you some matches in case your candle goes out?’
‘yes,’ said jack, feeling in his pocket. ‘well, goodbye for the present.
don’t fall down the hole.’
the boys left the dark hole under which they stood and began to maketheir way up the damp passage. the girls could no longer hear their voicesor footsteps. they waited patiently in the cave above, lighted by oneflickering candle. it was cold and they shivered, glad of their warm jerseys.
the boys were a very long time. the two girls became impatient and thenalarmed. what could have happened to them? they peered down the holebetween the great fronds of seaweed and listened. not a sound could beheard.
‘oh dear – do you think we ought to go after them?’ said lucy-anndesperately. she would be frightened to death going up that dark secretpassage, she was sure, and yet if jack was in need of help she would haveno hesitation in jumping down and following him.
‘better go and tell joe and get him to come and help,’ said dinah. ‘he’dbetter bring a rope, i should think. the boys would never be able to climbup through the hole back into this cave without help.’
‘no, don’t let’s tell joe,’ said lucy-ann, who disliked the manthoroughly, and was afraid of him. ‘we’ll wait a bit longer. maybe thepassage was a very long one.’
it was – far longer than the boys expected. it twisted and turned as itwent through the cliff, going upwards all the time. it was pitch-dark, and thecandle did not seem to light it very much. the boys bumped their headsagainst the roof every now and again, for it was sometimes only shoulderhigh.
it grew drier as it went up. soon there was no seaweedy smell at all, butthe air felt stale and musty. it was rather difficult to breathe.
‘i believe the air is bad here,’ panted philip, as they went on. ‘i canhardly breathe. once or twice i thought our candle was going out, freckles.
that would mean the air was very bad. surely we shall come to the end ofthis passage soon.’
as he spoke, the passage went steeply upwards and was cut into roughsteps. it ended abruptly in a rocky wall. the boys were puzzled.
‘it’s not a real passage, then,’ said philip, disappointed. ‘just a crack inthe cliff rocks, as you said. but these do look like rough steps, don’t they?’
the light of the candle shone down on to the steps. yes – someone hadhewn out those steps at one time – but why?
jack held the candle above his head – and gave a shout.
‘look! isn’t that a trap-door above our heads? that’s where the passageled to – that trap-door! i say – let’s get it open if we can.’
sure enough, there was an old wooden trap-door, closing the exit of thepassage, above their heads. if only they could lift it! wherever would theyfind themselves?
