CHAPTER XIII

THE CAVE AMONG THE ROCKS

“The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way, Shining green and silver with the hidden herring-shoal; But the Little Waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray And the Little Waves of Breffny go stumbling through my soul.” EVA GORE-BOOTH.

WALLY ran out upon a point of rock that ended abruptly in a sheer face, under which the outgoing tide ran swiftly, deep and green. For a moment he stood motionless, his slim body gleaming white against sea and rock; then he curved forward and shot into the water in a clean dive that made scarcely any splash. He reappeared, shaking the water from his eyes, his brown face glowing.

“Coo-ee, Jim! Come on—it’s ripping!”

Jim appeared from a cave, shedding the last of his raiment. There was no pause in his dive; his swift rush along the point ended in a leap that carried him far out, and when he emerged, strong over-arm strokes carried him quickly in towards a tiny bay where hard yellow sand made a perfect landing-place. Wally gave chase, unavailingly: when his feet touched the shore Jim was already racing again along the rocks, his dive this time beginning with a complete somersault in the air, before, with a mighty splash, he disappeared once more. Wally came hard upon his heels, springing in, in a sitting position, his hands locked under his knees; and for the next twenty minutes the chums sported in the water like a couple of seals, racing, playing tricks upon each other, and practising the dozen different dives taught them in schoolboy days in Australia. Finally they rubbed themselves down with dry, warm sand, donned their clothes, and subsided, glowing, on a sunny rock, to light their pipes.

“What a perfect place for a swim!” Jim said, looking at the long, narrow inlet with its twin headlands. “That point only needs one thing, Wal—a really good spring-board.”

“Yes. Do you remember the big spring-board in the St. Kilda baths—the one you broke when you were trying how high you could spring before diving?”

“Do I not!” said Jim ruefully. “It was the pride of the baths, and replacing it made me a poor man for the rest of the term!” He pitched a shell far out into the sea. “Doesn’t that seem ages ago!”

“So it is: anything that happened before the war _is_ ages ago,” Wally answered. “And I suppose, when we get back to Billabong, all this”—he swept a comprehensive gesture that included Ireland and Europe—“will seem a kind of prehistoric dream. Anyhow it’s a good dream while it lasts.”

“Yes, it’s all too good to have missed it,” Jim said. “Ireland has been jolly, beyond our hopes, thanks to O’Neill—what a brick that poor chap is! Now if we can only finish up by a bit of real fighting, it will all be a huge lark. I’m not a scrap sorry to have been in the trenches; it was all good experience. But I say, Wal, I do want to get going above ground!”

“Rather!” Wally answered. “I want to take a hand in a general worry, and afterwards to be in it when we chase the lovely Hun back to his happy home. And I specially want to be there when we chase ’em out of Brussels: I’d like to see that plucky Belgian King marching down his main street again. Won’t they howl!”

“We’ll all howl when that day comes,” said Jim. “You know, Ireland has been just topping, and it’s jolly to be with old dad and Norah again; but I’m beginning to think it’s about time we got back to work. We’re fit as possible now; and we didn’t sign on to play about. This sort of thing”—he touched his rough tweed clothes—“was all very well when we were crocks. But we aren’t crocks now. I think, of course, that it was only common sense to get quite fit; they don’t want half-cured people over yonder. Still——”

“Still, being cured, it’s time we dug out our khaki again,” Wally said, nodding. “I quite agree: one would begin to feel a shirker if one stayed much longer. And Australians haven’t shown themselves shirkers in this war.”

“No. It’s funny, you know,” Jim reflected. “I did hate the trenches—the filth, and the flies, and the smells, and the vermin; and I used to wonder if I was a tin-soldier, and had no business to have come at all, because lots of chaps say they love it, no matter what the conditions are. Well, I didn’t love it; I’d sooner have driven bullocks, any day.”

“Same here,” said Wally.

“It used to buck me that you felt the same,” Jim said, “because of course I knew you weren’t any tin-soldier, and the other fellows used to say how keen you were, and that you’d get on well.”

“But they said just the same to me about you, you old ass!” said Wally laughing. “Who got a special pat on the back at the last inspection, I’d like to know?”

“Oh, that was only luck,” said Jim, much embarrassed. “Bit of eye-wash for the C.O. Anyway, I used to worry for fear I wasn’t any good at the game; and it worried me that I was so awfully glad to come away, after they gassed us. But lately, I’ve been a bit bucked, because I’m getting no end keen to be back. We’ll hate it again, I’m certain. But one has got to see the job through. You feel it too, don’t you?”

“’M,” nodded Wally. “I suppose it’s just the beastliness one hates, but one likes one’s job.”

“I expect so. I used to get horribly annoyed with young Wilson, in my platoon, but I’d like uncommonly to know how the little beggar is shaping now, and who has the handling of him. He’s a queer-tempered, obstinate, cross-grained varmint, but he’ll do anything for you if you treat him like a human being. Only you can’t drive him. I hope we’ll get our old crowds back—though I’m afraid it’s rather too much to hope for.”

“I’m afraid so,” Wally agreed. “My corporal was a dear old thing; only he would persist periodically in forgetting that I was grown-up. I don’t blame them—the old N.C.O.’s know ever so much more than we do. That chap had been all over the world, and seen no end of service; he’d have had a commission if he could have kept off beer. It was when he was drunk that he used to think I was his small boy. I had my own troubles with him”—and Wally grinned reminiscently.

“They were such a good lot of fellows,” Jim said. “Oh, it will be pretty good to get back; and to see Anstruther and Garrett and Blake, and all the crowd again, and make them fight their battles over for us. It’s one of the annoying parts about our dose of gas that I haven’t the slightest recollection of our own little scrap. I used to remember the beginning; but now my only memory is of you sitting on a biscuit-tin eating bully, and I’m sure that happened before the fun began. I wonder if the other fellows will have much to talk about?”

“Well, _we_ won’t, anyhow,” Wally said. “Ireland isn’t the place for adventures. Let’s hope we may get some good specimens of our own in Flanders—and in Germany—and then we needn’t envy any of ’em.”

“Rather!” assented Jim. “I say, suppose we move on—the sun isn’t as hot as it was, or I’m colder than I was; and anyhow, we may as well explore.” He sprang up, followed by his chum, and they strolled across the rocks.

The party had been at Carrignarone for three days, and there was, as yet, no word from Con, who had departed on an outside car, _en route_ to Belfast, to obtain what was necessary to restore the motor to health. Not that anyone minded the delay. The little inn was clean and well-kept; the sea-fishing was good, and the bathing perfect; while the shore, with its alternating strand and rock, was a never-failing fascination. Wally and Jim had made friends with an old fisherman, who had taken them out with him very early that morning; and luck had been so good that they had come in some hours earlier than they were expected, so that the big haul they brought could be taken to the railway and landed in Dublin in time for the next morning’s market. At the inn, they found that Sir John, Norah, and Mr. Linton had gone out, leaving no word of their movements; so the boys, after an enormous lunch, had departed to explore the shore farther than their previous walks had led them, until the long narrow inlet had tempted them to bathe.

They strolled round the beach from the point where they had dived, now and then picking up a curious shell or some sea-treasure that might be included in the parcels that went periodically to Billabong, where Brownie would have cherished the veriest rubbish if only her nurslings had gathered it for her. The tide was almost out, and at the farther headland the rocks lay uncovered for a long way, full of alluring rock-pools, gleaming with sea-anemones. It was impossible to round the point, however, for it was higher than the other headland, and the water roared at its base, even at low tide; so they strolled back across the rocks, looking for the nearest place where it would be possible to climb up and cross the point.

The crags above them grew more accessible presently, and they scrambled up, slipping and clambering until they found themselves on a jutting rock with a wide flat surface, which, bathed in sunshine, invited them to stop and rest. Loose fragments of rock lay about the flat top, and Wally perched on one, but rose hastily.

“That thing wriggled under me,” he said, “It’s just on the balance: I believe I could push it over.”

“‘That Master Wally have the mischieviousness of ten boys,’ as Brownie used to say,” Jim remarked, lazily. “Sit down, and don’t play tricks with the landscape.”

“It would be considerably like hard work, so I don’t think I will,” said Wally, sitting down on another fragment. “This old table of a rock wants tidying up, I think—did you ever see so many loose chunks scattered about?”

“I expect a bit of the cliff fell on it from above, and flew into bits,” said Jim. “Anyhow, it’s warm and jolly. What’s that?”

Something tinkled on the rock, and Wally uttered a sharp exclamation of annoyance.

“Botheration! That’s my knife.”

“Hard luck!” said Jim, looking at a cleft in the surface, down which the knife had vanished. “Never mind; I’ve got two with me, and you can have one.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to lose that fellow,” Wally said, vexedly. “It’s that extra-special knife Norah gave me when I was going out—the big one she called ‘the lethal weapon.’ It’s full of all sorts of dodges. I’d sooner lose a lot of odd things than that knife.”

He lay flat, and put his eye to the cleft in the rock, peering downwards.

“Afraid it’s gone for good, old man,” Jim said. “It’s hard luck—but Norah will understand. She’ll probably jump at the chance of giving you another.”

“I want this one,” said Wally, his voice slightly muffled. He peered harder. “I say, Jim, I can see daylight down here.”

“I don’t see how you can,” Jim said, leaning over in his turn. “This old rock seems pretty solid. Let’s look.” He applied his eye to the cleft, in his turn.

“Well, there is light,” he said presently, sitting up. “I wonder if there’s some opening below, Wal?”

“Don’t know, but I’m going to see,” Wally answered. He swung himself over the edge of the flat rock and climbed down, followed by his chum. They hunted about the great pile, seeking for some opening that might explain the glimmer of daylight that had greeted them above.

On one side of the mass was the long stretch of rock from which they had first climbed up; but on the other they found smooth hard sand, only lately under water. There were openings here and there among the boulders, but they led to nothing, and had no communication with the upper air; they explored them in turn, but found no solution of the problem. Then, as Wally was backing out on hands and knees from one of these false scents, he heard a low whistle from Jim, and hurried round a boulder, to find him regarding what looked like a slit, about three feet high, between two masses of rock.

“There’s some sort of a cave in there,” Jim said. “I’ve been in a little way, and it looks rather interesting, so I came back for you. There’s light far above one’s head; I believe we’ll find your knife there.”

They crawled into the narrow passage. Almost immediately it turned, so sharply that a casual searcher might easily have been misled into thinking it ended: and then it widened and they found themselves in a long, narrow cave. They could see no roof; but far above, a faint bar of light glimmered, and made it possible to see where they were going. Underfoot was hard sand. The walls were dripping with wet and encrusted with seaweeds and limpets.

“This is a real sea-cave,” Wally said cheerfully.

An echo took his voice and went muttering round the rocks, the mutter rising at length almost to a cry. It was an eerie sound, in the wet dusk of the cave, with the dark smell of a submerged place in their nostrils; and the boys jumped.

“I guess this isn’t a place to raise one’s voice in,” Wally said, dropping his to a whisper. “That’s a nice, tame echo; I’d like to take it back to Billabong!”

“Would you!” uttered Jim, with feeling. “The blacks would say it was the Bunyip come back; and anyhow, you’d get into trouble for bringing out a prohibited immigrant.” He made a quick pounce on an object that glittered faintly on the sand. “There’s your knife, old man!”

“Bless you!” said Wally, thankfully receiving his property. “I say, what luck! and haven’t you the eye of a hawk?”

“Why, I kicked it,” said Jim. “A good thing it’s so big: I always thought Norah gave it to you with the idea that you might club a few Germans with it, if you got the chance—and scalp ’em afterwards. Get out!—” as Wally tipped his cap off. “Remember that you’re in a subterranean locality, and behave as such. Hark at that echo!”

He had raised his voice, unwittingly, and the echo had sent it shrieking round the cave. It was quite a relief when the sound died away to a low murmur.

“I’m not at all sure that it isn’t the Bunyip, an’ he livin’ here at his aise, as Con would say,” Wally muttered. “Come on; we’ll see how far this place goes.”

The light grew dimmer as they moved on, away from the crack overhead. Fortunately, Jim was never to be found without a tiny electric torch in his pocket, and its little beam of light was sufficiently to guide them. But for the torch their explorations would certainly have come to an end immediately, for it was not half a minute before they found themselves against a wall that apparently ended the cave.

“Well, it isn’t much of a cavern, after all,” Jim remarked. “Not bad as a dressing-room for Norah, if she wants to bathe from this beach—there’s clear sand right down to the water from the entrance in one place. She will have to come at low tide, though.”

He flashed his torch into the comers as they turned to retrace their steps. One was plainly nothing but solid wall: but in the other something caught his eye; a darker patch of shadow that was not quite like the rock.

“Why, I believe there’s an opening in that corner,” he said. “It must be another cave, communicating with this one. Come and see.”

The opening was only wide enough to admit one at a time, and so screened by a jutting boulder that it was almost invisible. Within was a cave very like the first one, though much larger; differing from it, too, in that the sand ended, and the floor was of fairly smooth rock, which, in the middle, held a great pool of water. This time there was no doubt that they were at the end of their subterranean journey; Jim flashed the light right round the wall, but there was no break in the solid rock, glistening with wet.

“Well, that’s the finish,” Wally said. “It isn’t a wildly exciting place, except for that demoniacal echo. We’ll bring Norah and the others here and make it talk. I’d like to hear what its little efforts would be like if one gave a football yell!”

“Something would break,” said Jim, suppressing a laugh. He strolled across to the pool, and turned the light on its black surface.

“That is a deep and mysterious and probably, haunted water-hole and you’d better be careful,” said Wally in a sepulchral whisper. “Most likely the Bunyip lives there, and in a moment we shall see his grisly head emerge from the unfathomed depths, and then all will be over with two promising young officers of His Majesty’s Army.” He paused for breath.

“Idiot!” said Jim, pleasantly. “I wonder if it’s deep. Lend me your stick, Wal.”

He leaned over the pool and thrust the stick into its depths. It went in for its full length. Then came a sound which made the boys look at each other in bewilderment.

“It sounds as if the Bunyip had been chucking his old tins in,” Wally said.

“It’s tin, I’ll swear,” Jim answered. “And solid at that; I can’t move it.”

He took off his coat, rolled his shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, and recommenced investigations. It was easy enough to feel the stick scraping on tin; beyond that, he could make out nothing, save that there was plenty of tin to scrape. Jim desisted at length, and stood pondering.

“I think this is pretty queer,” he said, presently. “Wonder if we’ve stumbled on a smuggler’s cave, Wal. Look here, I’m going to paddle.”

“Well, you don’t know the depth of that beastly place,” Wally said. “For all we know it may be miles deep.”

“Well, can’t I swim?” Jim queried in amazement.

“Yes, a little. Anyhow, I’m coming, too.”

Jim laughed softly.

“I thought that was it,” he said. “Look here—you stay at the edge with the light, and I’ll hold one end of the stick, and you can hang on to the other. That will make it all right. There’s no sense in out both paddling in.”

Wally assented, more or less reluctantly; and Jim took off his boots and stockings and rolled his trouser-legs high. Then, he stepped carefully into the black pool.

“By Jove, it’s cold!” he said.

“What’s the bottom like?”

“Fairly smooth.” He moved on, becoming less cautious. Then he uttered an exclamation.

“What’s up?” came from Wally.

“I’ve stubbed my silly toe against something—my own fault.” Jim answered. “Why, it’s another tin!”

He stooped, feeling in the water. Presently he let go of the stick, and plunged both hands in: and in a moment turned, carrying something that was evidently heavy. He put it on the rock at the edge of the pool, and stepped out of the water. Wally flashed the light on the treasure-trove, and then whistled softly.

“Petrol!”

Jim nodded.

“The pool is full of it, I believe: I felt lots of other tins.” He turned the big square can over and over, finding no mark upon it. “H’m. Now I’m going to put it back.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Because I don’t know whom we have to deal with,” Jim said. He waded in again and replaced the heavy tin, returning quickly, and picking up his boots and stockings.

“Slip out and reconnoitre, carefully,” he said. “Take care that you aren’t seen. Find out if anyone is in sight.”

Wally returned in a few minutes.

“Not a soul,” he reported. “And there’s not a footmark visible on the sand, except our own.”

“That’s good, anyhow,” Jim said. “We’ll get out of this.”

He led the way out, not speaking until they were clear of the rocks near the cave. Then he sat down, and for the first time the two boys looked at each other. Their faces were grave.

“It’s submarines, of course?” Wally asked. “Germans?”

“Couldn’t be anything else. And what a depôt! Look at this inlet—shut in by the headlands, with a perfect sandy bottom: a submarine could come in here and lie in complete safety, and no one would ever dream of looking for her. The cave is not five minutes from the water’s edge, even at low tide—of course, no one could get in to it at all unless the tide were right out: when it is in there’s a foot of water over the entrance.”

“Yes—and at low tide the sand is as hard as iron,” Wally said, excitedly. “They could fill their collapsible boat with petrol tins in ten minutes with two or three men to fish them out of the water and a few more to carry them down. Oh, Jimmy, we’ve got to bag them!”

“Rather!” Jim answered. “The question is, how?”

He thought deeply.

“We must be awfully careful,” he said, at last.

“It’s much too big and important for us to mess up by trying to keep it to ourselves. But there isn’t a policeman in the district, and if there were, he might mess it up as badly as ourselves. We’ve got to get a patrol-boat round to the inlet somehow; you know they’re all round the coast, and it wouldn’t take long to bring one here. But one doesn’t know whom to trust. The Germans may be getting help from on shore, for all we can tell.”

“Of course they may,” Wally cried. “People say there are plenty of pro-Germans about; and they’d pay well enough to tempt these peasantry. But all the people we’ve talked to in Carrignarone seem just as keen as we are about the war. I don’t believe they’re in it.”

“Neither do I, but it’s hard to tell,” Jim answered. “Oh, it’s maddening!—the brutes may come in to-night, for all we know! We can telegraph to the nearest coastguard station, of course, or wherever one can catch a patrol-boat—there are some sort of instructions about submarines and aeroplanes posted up in every post-office. But she might not be in time.”

“I suppose we can trust the postmistress?”

“If we can’t, we’re done,” Jim said. “If only the motor were all right we needn’t trust anyone. Isn’t it simply sickening to think we may do the wrong thing altogether? And if we make a mistake, and the submarine gets away with a fresh supply of petrol, she may sink half a dozen _Lusitanias_ before she is caught!”

“We’ve just got to get her,” Wally said, between his teeth. “It seems to me there’s only one thing to do: we must telegraph for the patrol-boat, and, meanwhile, watch every night at low tide. It’s a comfort that they can’t get into the cave at any other time, isn’t it? I say, Jim, your father said we were kids to bring our revolvers with us—but isn’t it a mercy we did!”

“Rather!” Jim said. The revolvers had been new toys; they had not felt able to part from them. “And O’Neill has one, too—you remember, he said we might have some shooting-practice in these lonely parts and teach Norah how to use one.” He became silent, suddenly, and Wally, watching his thoughtful face, did not interrupt him. After a while he spoke, half-apologetically.

“I say, Wal, old chap.”

“Yes?”

“Look here,” Jim said. “It’s your show as much as mine, of course, and I won’t do anything to which you don’t agree. But——” he stopped again.

“Oh, do go on!” said Wally. “Say it!”

“Well, it’s just this. We’ll get lots of shows later on, if we’ve any luck: not so important as this, perhaps, but still, there ought to be chances. Anyhow, we’re able to go out to the Front and do our bit. And that poor chap isn’t.”

“O’Neill?” Wally said. “No.”

“Well—do you see what I mean?”

“It takes brains,” said Wally, laughing. “But I think I do. You want to make this his show?”

Jim nodded.

“It wouldn’t hurt us,” he said. “He is such a brick, and he’s eating his heart out over the whole thing. It’s just the toughest sort of luck—and here he is, knocking about with us and giving us a ripping time, and you’d think that every time he looks at us it must remind him of what he wants to have and can’t. And now here’s a thing he could be right in.”

“Rather!” Wally said. “I’m jolly glad you thought of it, old man. And it isn’t any beautiful sacrifice on our parts, either, for he has tons more brains than we have, and he’s a first-class shot. Let’s get him to run it altogether, and we’ll be his subalterns.”

Jim sighed with relief.

“It seemed a bit hard to ask you to give up the credit,” he said.

“And what about you?” grinned Wally

“Oh, credit be hanged!” said Jim, laughing. “Anyhow, we’ll get all the fun!”

_Jim and Wally_] [_Page_ 225