chapter twelve the cave in the cliff
cautiously the children made their way down the slippery deck towards the locker. the door ofthis had evidently been shut on the trunk but had come open, so that the trunk was not hidden, as hadbeen intended.
julian pulled out the little black trunk. all the children were amazed. why should anyone put a trunkthere?
"smugglers, do you think?" said dick, his eyes gleaming.
"yes - it might be," said julian, thoughtfully, trying to undo the straps of the trunk. "this would be avery good place for smugglers. ships that knew the way could put in, cast off a boat with smuggledgoods, leave them here, and go on their way, knowing that people could come and collect the goodsat their leisure."
"do you think there are smuggled goods inside the trunk?" asked anne, in excitement. "what wouldthere be? diamonds? silks?"
"anything that has a duty to be paid on it before it can get into the country," said julian. "blow thesestraps! i can't undo them."
"let me try," said anne, who had very deft little fingers. she began to work at the buckles, and in ashort time had the straps undone. but a further disappointment awaited them. the trunk was well andtruly locked! there were two good locks, and no keys!
"blow!" said george. "how sickening! how can we get the trunk open now?""we can't," said julian. "and we mustn't smash it open, because it would warn whoever it belongs tothat the goods had been found. we don't want to warn the smugglers that we have discovered theirlittle game. we want to try and catch them!""ooooh!" said anne, going red with excitement. "catch the smugglers! oh julian! do you reallythink we could?"
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"why not?" said julian. "no one knows we are here. if we hid whenever we saw a ship approachingthe island, we might see a boat coming to it, and we could watch and find out what is happening. ishould think that the smugglers are using this island as a sort of dropping-place for goods. i wonderwho comes and fetches them? someone from kirrin village or the nearby places, i should think.""this is going to be awfully exciting," said dick. "we always seem to have adventures when wecome to kirrin. it's absolutely full of them. this will be the third one we have had.""i think we ought to be getting back over the rocks," said julian, suddenly looking over the side ofthe ship and seeing that the tide had turned. "come on - we don't want to be caught by the tide andhave to stay here for hours and hours! i'll go down the rope first. then you come, anne."they were soon climbing over the rocks again, feeling very excited. just as they reached the laststretch of rocks leading to the rocky cliff of the island itself, dick stopped.
"what's up?" said george, pushing behind him. "do get on!""isn't that a cave, just beyond that big rock there?" said dick, pointing. "it looks awfully like one tome. if it was, it would be a simply lovely place to store our things in, and even to sleep in, if it wasout of reach of the sea."
"there aren't any caves on kirrin," began george, and then she stopped short. what dick waspointing at really did look like a cave. it was worth while seeing if it was one. after all, george hadnever explored this line of rocks, and so had never been able to catch sight of the cave that lay justbeyond. it could not possibly be seen from the land.
"we'll go and see," she said. so they changed their direction, and instead of climbing back the waythey had come, they cut across the mass of rock and made their way towards a jutting-out part of thecliff, in which the cave seemed to be.
they came to it at last. steep rocks guarded the entrance, and half hid it. except from where dick hadseen it, it was really impossible to catch sight of it, it was so well-hidden.
"it is a cave!" said dick, in delight, stepping into it. "and my, what a fine one!"it really was a beauty. its floor was spread with fine white sand, as soft as powder, and perfectly dry,for the cave was clearly higher than the tide reached, except, possibly in a bad winter storm.
round one side of it ran a stone ledge.
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"exactly like a shelf made for us!" cried anne, in joy. "we can put all our things here. how lovely!
let's come and live here and sleep here. and look, julian we've even got a skylight in the roof!"the little girl pointed upwards, and the others saw that the roof of the cave was open in one part,giving on to the cliff-top itself. it was plain that somewhere on the heathery cliff above was a holethat looked down to the cave, making what anne called a "skylight'.
"we could drop all our things down through that hole," said julian, quickly making plans. "we wouldhave an awful time bringing them over the rocks. if we can find that hole up there when we are outon the cliff again, we can let down everything on a rope. it's not a very high"skylight", as anne calls it, for the cliffs are low just here. i believe we could swing ourselves down arope easily, so that we needn't have the bother of clambering over the rocks to the seaward entrancewe have just come in by!"
this was a grand discovery. "our island is even more exciting than we thought," said anne, happily.
"we've got a beautiful cave to share now!"the next thing to do, of course, was to go up on the cliff and find the hole that led to the roof of thecave. so out they all went, timmy too. timmy was funny on the slippery rocks. his feet slitheredabout, and two or three times he fell into the water. but he just swam across the pools he fell into,clambered out and went on again with his slithering.
"he's like george!" said anne, with a laugh. "he never gives up, whatever happens to him!"they climbed up to the top of the cliff. it was easy to find the hole once they knew it was there.
"pretty dangerous, really," said julian, when he had found it, and was peering down. "any one of usmight have run on this cliff and popped down the hole by accident. see, it's all criss-crossed withblackberry brambles."
they scratched their hands, trying to free the hole from the brambles. once they had cleared the hole,they could look right down into the cave quite easily.
"it's not very far down," said anne. "it looks almost as if we could jump down, if we let ourselvesslide down this hole."
"don't you do anything of the sort," said julian. "you'd break your leg. wait till we get a rope fixedup, hanging down into the cave. then we can manage to get in and out easily."57
they went back to the boat, and began unloading it. they took everything across to the seaward sideof the island, where the cave was. julian took a strong rope and knotted it thickly at intervals.
"to give our feet a hold as we go down," he explained. "if we drop down too quickly, we'll hurt ourhands. these knots will stop us slipping and help us to climb up.""let me go down first, and then you can lower all our things to me," said george. so down she went,hand over hand, her feet easily finding the thick knots, feeling for one after another. it was a goodway to go down.
"how shall we get timmy down?" said julian. but timothy, who had been whining anxiously at theedge of the hole, watching george sliding away from him, solved the difficulty himself.
he jumped into the hole and disappeared down it! there came a shriek from below.
"oh! my goodness, what's this! oh timmy! have you hurt yourself?"the sand was very soft, like a velvet cushion and tim had not hurt himself at all. he gave himself ashake and then barked joyfully. he was with george again! he wasn't going to have his mistressdisappearing down mysterious holes without following her at once. not timmy!
then followed the business of lowering down all the goods. anne and dick tied the things together inrugs, and julian lowered them carefully. george untied the rope as soon as it reached her, took outthe goods, and then back went the rope again to be tied round another bundle.
"last one!" called julian, after a long spell of really hard work. "then down we come too, and i don'tmind telling you that before we make our beds or anything, our next job is to have a jolly good meal!
it's hours and hours since we had a meal, and i'm starving."soon they were all sitting on the warm soft floor of the cave. they opened a tin of meat, cut hugeslices of bread and made sandwiches. then they opened a tin of pineapple chunks and ate those,spooning them out of the tin full of sweetness and juice. after that they still felt hungry so theyopened two tins of sardines and dug them out with biscuits. it made a really grand meal.
"ginger-pop to finish up with please," said dick "my word, why don't people always have meals likethis?"
"we'd better hurry up or we shan't be able to get heather for our beds," said george, sleepily.
"who wants heather?" said dick, "i don't! this lovely soft sand is all i shall want - and a cushion anda rug or two. i shall sleep better here than ever i did in bed!"58
so the rugs and cushions were spread out on the sandy floor of the cave. a candle was lighted as itgrew dark, and the four sleepy children looked at one another. timmy, as usual, was with george.
"good-night," said george. "i can't keep awake another minute. "good-night, ev . . . ery . . .
body . . . good . . . night!"
