Over Sea, Under Stone

  He swung round on his heel, ducked under the arms that grabbed too late to catch him, and raced along the quay towards the road. The hill was empty, drained of people by the carnival procession, and he was twenty-five yards clear of the confused group on the quay before they could properly begin to give chase. He heard the shouts and pounding feet behind him, and flung himself up the hill towards the Grey House.

  Simon and Jane stared in amazement from the steps. Suddenly there had been Rufus’s blood-chilling howl; now suddenly Barney, with four threatening figures at his heels. They ran instinctively down the steps towards him, and then swung back in alarm at the worst sound of all. Behind them, the door of the Grey House had slammed; and the key was inside.

  Barney staggered up to them, and Rufus came bounding down from the wall. Jane said, panic-stricken: “Which way?”

  Simon turned frantically to the great wooden door in the wall which was the Grey House’s side entrance; often it was kept locked. He pressed the latch, his heart thumping. Relief flooded over him in a wave as the door opened, and he pushed it wide. “Quick!” he yelled.

  The four figures pounding grim and intent at Barney’s heels were only a few steps behind. Jane and Barney shot inside the door, with Rufus a swift red flurry among their feet. The wall itself seemed to shake as Simon slammed the door shut and hurriedly pushed home the three big iron bolts. They ran up the cold, narrow little alley between the side of the Grey House and the house next door, and paused at the far end. Outside, footsteps skidded up to the door. They saw the latch rise as someone on the other side pressed it. It rattled angrily, and there was a thump against the door. Then there was silence.

  “Suppose they climb over the wall?” Jane whispered fearfully.

  “They couldn’t possibly,” Simon whispered back. “It’s too high.”

  “Perhaps they’ll break the door down!”

  “Those bolts are jolly strong. Anyway people would see them and get suspicious. . . . Listen. They’ve gone away.”

  They all strained their ears. There was no sound from the door at the other end of the alley. Rufus looked up at them inquiringly and whined, whistling plaintively through his nose.

  “What are they doing? They must be up to something. . . .”

  “Quick!” Simon said decisively. “We’ve got to get away from the house before they have time to get round the back. They’ll have it surrounded soon.”

  In panic they ran into the little back garden, and up through the knee-high grass to the hedge at the top. Rufus bounded round them cheerfully, jumping to lick Barney’s face. He seemed to have forgotten the uncanny impulse that had made him utter that one long, lost howl, and now he was behaving as if everything were just a great game.

  “I hope that dog’s going to keep quiet,” Jane said anxiously.

  Simon peered through the gap in the hedge.

  “He will,” Barney said. He bent down and cupped one hand gently over Rufus’s long red muzzle, murmuring to him under his breath.

  Simon straightened. “It’s all clear. Come on.”

  One by one they slipped out of the garden into the road that curved round behind the houses from the harbour, along the edge of Kemare Head.

  “Oh,” Jane said in sudden anguish, “if only we knew where Gumerry had gone.”

  Barney said, horrified, “Didn’t you find him? What about Mrs. Palk?”

  “No, we didn’t find him. We did see Mrs. Palk, but we couldn’t get to her through the crowd. Didn’t you see him? Why were they chasing you? Where did you come from? We thought something awful must have happened when Rufus came back on his own, but we didn’t know where to look for you.”

  “Wait a minute,” Barney said. The shock of waking from his bewitched daze was turning into an enormous sense of urgency. A dozen things that he had heard in the last hour were dodging about in his mind; and as he began to see their meaning he was feeling more and more alarmed.

  “Simon,” he said earnestly, “we’ve got to get the grail. Now. Even without Great-Uncle Merry. There isn’t time to look for him, or wait, or anything. I think they’re very nearly on to it. Only not quite, that’s why they wanted me.”

  “First thing is to get away from here.” Simon looked about him wildly. “They could come up either way from the harbour. We’ll have to get off the road and hide in that field at the back of the headland. The land doesn’t slope there, we ought to be able to keep hidden.”

  They crossed the road and came out into the fields at the bottom of Kemare Head. The sun blazed high up in the sky still, beating down with a heat that pressed on them like a giant hand. But not even Jane was worrying about the chances of sunstroke now.

  As they reached the hedge on the far side of the first field, they heard voices. They scrambled hastily through the hedge, without pausing to look round, and flattened themselves in the long grass on the other side. Barney slid his arm apprehensively over Rufus’s back, but the dog lay quiet, with his long pink tongue lolling out.

  Nobody saw quite where they came from, but suddenly the figures were standing there on the road. Mr. Withers, slight and stooping a little, darting his head about like a weasel; the boy Bill, walking wary and belligerent in his bright shirt; and towering over them both, the tall menacing figure in black, a dark gash across the heat-wavering summer day. Watching, Simon thought suddenly of the desperate day when threatening feet were pounding after him, down a lonely road; and he turned his eyes away from the man.

  “The girl’s not there,” Barney hissed. “She must be watching the front, in case we tried to come out that way again.”

  Down on the road the little group stood for a moment irresolute. Bill turned and peered across the field, straight towards the hedge. The three children flattened themselves closer to the ground, hardly daring to breathe. But Bill looked away again, apparently satisfied. Withers looked across the field as well, and said something to him. The boy shook his head.

  The tall figure in black had been standing a little way apart, motionless. It was difficult to tell which way he was looking. All at once he raised his arm, pointing seaward to the rising bulk of Kemare Head. He seemed to be talking earnestly.

  “What are they going to do?” Jane whispered. Cramp was beginning to gnaw agonisingly at her right leg, and she was longing to move.

  “If they’re going to the end of the headland we’re sunk,” Simon said, low and strained.

  “How many more of them are there, for goodness’ sake? That tall man . . . ” Jane stared at him through the erratic leaf-starred gaps in the hedge. She could not see his face, but a cold sense of familiarity was beginning to grow in her mind. Then, as she gazed, he took off his wide black hat for a moment to brush his hand across his forehead, and suddenly she knew the shape of the head with the thick dark hair. The pattern of twigs and grass and sunlight swirled before her eyes, and she clutched at Simon’s arm.

  “Simon! It’s him again! It’s—”

  “I know that,” Simon said. “The moment he came round the comer I knew. I thought you did.”

  “He’s the boss of all of them,” Barney whispered in the same urgent undertone. “His name’s Hastings.”

  “That’s right,” Jane said faintly. “Hastings. The vicar.”

  Barney wriggled a little in the grass to stare at her. “He’s not the vicar.”

  “He is. I saw him at the vicarage. Oh, you remember. . . .”

  “Is it a big rambling sort of house, all neglected?” Barney said slowly. “With a long drive, and a room full of books?”

  It was Jane’s turn to stare. “I remember saying about the books, but not about the drive. How did you—”

  Barney said, with the utmost conviction: “I don’t care what you say, he isn’t the vicar. I don’t know what he is, but it isn’t that. He can’t possibly be. There’s something perfectly beastly about him. He’s like everything Gumerry said about the other side, you can sort of feel it, looking at him. And he says things . . . ”
r />   “Keep down!” Simon said abruptly. They all dropped their heads into the grass, and lay silent for a long moment while the sun beat down on their backs and scorched the skin behind their knees, and the cool long grass along the edge of the hedge tickled their cheeks. Rufus stirred and grunted and was quiet again. He had fallen asleep.

  In a little while Simon nervously raised his head a few inches from the ground, hearing nothing but the call of one far-away gull high up in the sky. He had seen the three figures turn and move across the field and for a moment he had thought they were caught in a trap. But there was no one now on the road where they had stood, and no one in the silent stretch of the field.

  “They’ve gone!” he whispered exultantly. Barney and Jane raised their heads too, slowly and cautiously.

  “Look!” Jane propped herself on one elbow, and pointed out to the coast. There they were, the tall black striding figure and the two smaller ones, one on either side, bobbing out of sight along the side of Kemare Head.

  “Oh!” Barney rolled over on his back and groaned with despair. “We’re cut off! How can we get out on the headland now?”

  Jane sat up, wincing as she stretched her cramped legs. She said despondently,” I don’t see what there is to get worked up about. We can’t do anything. We found where the grail is, but we can’t get at it anyway. If there is a bottom entrance, it’s under the sea, and the hole we found at the top is too narrow to get through even if we had a rope.”

  Barney said, yelping, “But they’ll be able to. I know they will. That man can do anything, he seems to have things planned before he even knows they’re going to happen. And if they find the hole in the rocks. . . .”

  “But they couldn’t go down any more than we could,” Jane said reasonably. “And they couldn’t get in from the bottom either, unless they’ve got diving suits on the yacht. Anyway,” she added without much conviction, “we aren’t really absolutely sure the grail’s there at all.”

  “But we are, you know we are!” Barney’s anxious frustration was mounting unbearably. “We’ve got to stop them. Even if we can’t do anything ourselves, we’ve got to stop them!”

  “Don’t be a silly little boy,” Jane said, irritated by disappointment. “We’ll just have to let them go, and keep out of their way till we find Great-Uncle Merry. There isn’t a thing we can do.”

  “There is one thing,” Simon said. His voice sounded muffled and rather gruff, as it always did when he was trying not to be excited. They looked at him, and Jane raised an eyebrow sceptically. Simon said nothing. He was sitting hugging his knees, frowning out across the field.

  “Well, go on then.”

  “The tide.”

  “The tide? What d’you mean?”

  “The tide’s out.”

  “Well, what’s so marvellous about that? I know it is,” Barney said, wonderingly. “You could see the mud down in the harbour.”

  But Simon was not listening. “Jane, you remember what Mr. Penhallow said down in the harbour. About the tide being low.”

  “Oh yes.” Jane began to look less gloomy. “Yes, that’s right. It goes very low today, he said . . . spring tide . . . right round the rocks...”

  “You can walk right round the rocks,” Simon said.

  “So what?” demanded Barney.

  “If we could walk right round the rocks,” Simon said with careful patience, “we could walk right round the bottom of Kemare Head.”

  Jane interrupted, catching him up, “And the cave, the underwater entrance—when we heard the noise of the sea coming up the hole this morning, the tide was high. So the waves were still coming over the entrance. But don’t you see, Barney, with this special low tide—if it uncovers all the rocks down there, it may uncover the entrance as well, and we should be able to get in.”

  Barney’s face was a comical mixture of expressions; blankness dissolving into excitement, and then into alarm. “Gosh! Come on then, let’s get down there!” He jumped to his feet, and then wailed. “But we can’t! There’s one of them watching the harbour, and the other three out on the headland—how can we get down there without being seen?”

  “I’ve thought of that too.” Simon was pink with importance. “Just a minute ago. There’s the other side. The bay on the other side of the headland, where we bathe from. We can get across the fields to it from here without them seeing us, unless they’re actually up by the standing stones looking down in that direction. If they look down we’ve had it, but it’s the only way I can see.”

  “They won’t be,” Jane said confidently. “They wouldn’t expect us to go down there. They’d be watching the harbour side.”

  “Come on, we’ve got to be quick. Quicker than ever now. The tide was still going out when we were up over the harbour, I think, but it may turn any moment. I wish we knew exactly when.”

  Barney, with Rufus roused and leaping round him again, was already several yards across the field. He halted suddenly, looking troubled, and turned slowly back. “There’s still Great-Uncle Merry. He’ll never find us now. He’ll be worried stiff.”

  “He didn’t bother much about worrying us stiff when he disappeared this morning,” Simon said shortly.

  “Oh, but all the same—”

  “Look,” Simon said, “I’m the oldest, and I’m in charge. It’s got to be Gumerry or the grail we look for, Barney, there isn’t time for both. And I say we go after the grail.”

  “So do I,” Jane said.

  “Oh well,” said Barney, and he went on over the field, secretly relieved to be able to accept commands. He felt he had had enough of being the lone hero that day to last him for years—so that his private dreams of solitary bold knights in shining armour would never be quite the same again.

  They were all three hot and breathless by the time they reached the beach in the next bay from Trewissick, on the other side of Kemare Head. But they saw to their relief that the tide had obviously not yet begun to come back in.

  The sea seemed to be miles away, over a vast stretch of silver-white sand unscarred by footprints under the sun, and as they looked eagerly along the side of the headland they could see rocks uncovered at its foot. Before, the waves had always washed up against the cliff, even at the lowest tide.

  Their feet sank into the soft dry sand at the top of the beach. Barney flopped down and began to unstrap one sandal. “Wait a minute, I want to take my shoes off.”

  “Oh come on,” Simon said impatiently, “you’ll only have to put them back on again when we get to the rocks.”

  “I don’t care, I’m taking them off now all the same. Anyway I’m tired.”

  Simon groaned, and whacked the telescope case against his knee in exasperation. More than ever now he was determined to carry the manuscript wherever they went, and the case was hot and damp in the palm of his hand.

  Jane sat down on the sand beside Barney. “Come on, Simon, have a rest just for five minutes. It won’t hurt, and I’m jolly hot as well.”

  Not altogether unwillingly, Simon let his knees give way and collapsed to lie flat on his back. The sun blazed down into his eyes, and he turned over quickly. “Golly, what a day. I could do with a swim.” He looked longingly out at the sea; but his eyes swivelled at once back to the rocks.

  “There’s even more uncovered than I thought there would be. Look, it’s going to be easy as anything to walk round the cliff. It looks pretty wet in places, where the tide’s left some water behind, but we can get through that easily enough.”

  “So you’ll have to take your shoes off as well,” said Barney triumphantly. He hung his sandals round his neck by their straps and wiggled his toes luxuriously in the sand, looking up at the gulls wheeling and faintly calling high over the beach. Then he stiffened. “Listen!”

  “I heard that too,” Simon said, looking up curiously. “Funny, it sounded like an owl.”

  “It was an owl,” Barney said, peering up at the towering side of the headland. “It came from up there. I thought you only h
eard owls at night.”

  “You do. And if they come out in the day-time they get mobbed by all the other birds, because they eat their young. We studied it at school.”

  “Well, the gulls don’t seem to be taking any notice,” Barney said. He looked up at the dark specks lazily sailing to and fro over the sky. Then he glanced round the beach. “Hey, where’s Rufus?”

  “Oh, he’s around somewhere. He was here just a minute ago.”

  “No, he isn’t.” Barney stood up. “Rufus! Rufus!” He whistled, on the long lilting note that the dog always answered to. Behind them they heard a bark, and they looked up the beach towards the sloping field to see Rufus on the edge of the grass, facing away from the sea but with his head turned to look back at them.

  Barney whistled again, and patted his knee. The dog did not move.

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He looks frightened. Has he hurt himself?”

  “I hope not.” Barney ran up the beach and took Rufus by the collar, fondling his neck. The dog licked his hand. “Come on, boy.” Barney said softly. “Come on, then. There’s nothing wrong. Come on, Rufus.” He tugged gently at the collar, moving back towards Simon and Jane. But Rufus would not move. He whined, straining away from the beach; his ears were pricked uneasily, and when Barney pulled more impatiently at his collar he turned his head and gave a low warning growl.

  Puzzled, Barney relaxed his grip. As he did so, the dog suddenly jerked as if he had heard something, growled again, and slipped out of his grasp to trot swiftly away over the grass. Barney called, but he went on without a pause, head bent, tail between his legs, loping away in a straight line until he disappeared round the side of the headland.

  Barney came slowly back down the beach. “Did you see that? Something must have frightened him—I bet he’s run all the way home.”

  “Perhaps it was that owl,” Simon said.

  “I suppose it might have been—hey, listen, there it is again!” Barney looked up. “It is up on the headland.”

  This time they all heard it; the long husking wail drifting softly down: “Whooo-oo. . . .”