Over Sea, Under Stone

  As she listened, Jane felt all her warning instincts mutter deep in her mind. For a moment she could not understand. She looked up, troubled, at the looming mass of Kemare Head, and the tops of the standing stones outlined against the sky.

  “Stupid bird,” Simon said idly, lying down on his back again. “Thinks it’s night-time. Tell it to go back to bed.”

  As if something exploded inside her head, Jane remembered. “Simon, quick! It’s not a bird at all. It’s not an owl. It’s them!”

  The others stared at her.

  Jane jumped to her feet, the lulling warmth of sun and sand forgotten in a sudden new panic. “Don’t you remember—that night, up on the headland, by the standing stones. We heard some owls hoot, and that was why Gumerry went off to look, because he thought they didn’t sound right. And it wasn’t owls, it was the enemy. Oh quick, perhaps they’ve seen us! Perhaps that was a signal from one of them to tell the others we’re here!”

  Simon was up on his feet before she had finished. “Come on, Barney. Quick!”

  Away from the revealing emptiness of the beach they dashed towards the rocky side of the headland, the sand squeaking against their feet as they ran. Barney’s sandals bounced about on his chest, kicking him. Jane lost the hair-ribbon from her pony-tail, and her hair flowed loose, tickling the back of her neck. Simon ran clutching the telescope case grimly like a relay-runner’s baton. They made straight for the cliff, and paused under its great grey height to look fearfully back at the grassy slope rising behind the beach. But there was no sign of anyone coming after them, and they heard no owl cry.

  “Perhaps they didn’t see us after all.”

  “I bet they can’t really see this beach from anywhere on the top of the headland.”

  “Well, we’ve got to hurry all the same. Come on, or the tide will turn and beat us to it.”

  They were still running on sand, along the side of the cliff, towards the end of the headland and the sea. Then they came to the rocks, and they began to climb.

  The rocks were perilous to cross. At first they were dry, and fairly smooth, and it was easy to scramble from one grey jagged ridge to the next, skirting the small pools where anemones spread their tentacles like feathered flowers among seaweed leaves, and shrimps darted transparent to and fro. But soon they came to the rocks that were uncovered only at the lowest spring tides. Great masses of seaweed grew there, shining, still wet in the sun; slippery brown weed that squelched and popped under their feet, giving way sometimes without warning to drop them into a pool.

  They came to a long stretch of water left trapped in the rocks. Barney, still determinedly barefoot, was trailing some way behind the other two. They waited at the edge of the water as he picked his way gingerly towards them. “Ow!” he said, as he trod on a winkle.

  “Do put your sandals on,” Jane said imploringly. “It doesn’t matter about getting them wet, ours are sopping already. You might step on anything in this pool and cut your feet to bits.”

  Barney said, with surprising meekness due to having stubbed three toes, “All right.” He perched on a jutting rock and unhooked his sandals from round his neck. “Seems silly to put your shoes on to go paddling, instead of taking them off.”

  “You can call it paddling,” Simon said darkly. “There might be all sorts of ravenous deep-sea fish left in here. Mr. Penhallow says the sea’s terrifically deep just off the headland.” He gazed into the mass of bulbous brown seaweed floating on the surface of the pool. “Oh well, here goes.”

  They splashed through the weed, keeping close to the cliff and catching nervously at the rock to keep their balance. Simon, first in line, reached out warily with his forward foot, stirring the water so that the seaweed swirled cold and clammy against his skin. The bottom of the pool seemed fairly smooth, and he went more confidently, with the others following behind. Then suddenly his probing foot met no resistance, and before he could throw his weight backwards he had slipped down waist-deep in water. Jane, last in line, squealed involuntarily as she saw him drop. Barney held out a hand to Simon, suddenly a much shorter figure than himself.

  “It’s all right,” Simon said, more surprised than damaged. After the first shock the water felt pleasantly cold on his sunbaked legs. He moved carefully forward, and after a couple of steps felt rock against his knees under the water of the pool. He hauled himself up, splashing like a stranded fish, and in a few moments was only ankle-deep in water again.

  “It’s a sort of underwater trough. It goes right up to the cliff. Be careful, Barney. Feel with your toes a bit further out and see if there are any footholds there. There might be some sticking up under the water, like stepping-stones. I went down before I had a chance to feel. If there aren’t any you’ll just have to come across the way I did. Only slower.”

  Barney prodded carefully about with one foot beneath the water and its swaying carpet of seaweed, but even farther away from the cliff he could feel only the edge of the underwater ridge, and beyond it nothing. “I can’t feel anything to tread on at all.”

  “You’ll have to go down, then. Lower yourself into it.”

  “We might as well have gone swimming after all,” Barney said nervously. He crouched with both hands on the bottom until he was sitting in the water with his legs dangling over the hidden crevasse, and let himself slip down.

  The water was almost over his shoulders when he felt his feet on firm rock; he had forgotten how much taller Simon was. He waded across and Simon hauled him out into the shallow water. Barney’s shorts, wet and dark, clung heavily to his thighs, and he bent to detach odd fronds of seaweed that had twined themselves round his legs. Almost at once he felt the heat of the sun begin to dry his skin, leaving behind only the rasp of salt. Jane followed in the same way, and together they splashed across the last few shallow feet of the pool to where the rocks jutted out dry among the brown mounds of seaweed again.

  “I do wish we knew about the tide,” Simon said anxiously to Jane. Barney had gone eagerly slipping and slithering over the rocks ahead of them.

  Jane looked towards the sea. It lapped mildly against the edge of the rocks a few yards away, leaving a natural pathway all round the bottom of the cliff.

  “It certainly hasn’t moved. It might even be going out still. I shouldn’t worry yet, we must be nearly there.”

  “Well, keep an eye on it. It’s that deep bit I’m worried about. When the water does start coming in it’ll come into the pool first of all, and it wouldn’t have to fill up far for us not to be able to get back the way we came. It’d be over Barney’s head in no time.”

  Jane blanched, and looked ahead at her younger brother now scrambling on all fours. “Oh Simon. D’you think we should have left him behind?”

  Simon grinned. “I’d like to have seen you try. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. Just so long as we watch the tide.”

  Looking back, Jane suddenly realised how far they had come. They stood now on the rocks at the very tip of the headland. The small distant sounds of the land no longer drifted out from the beach, and there was nothing but the gentle sigh of the sea. It was almost as if they were cut off already.

  Then Barney yelled in excitement. “Hey look! Quick! Come here! I’ve found it!”

  He was standing close to the cliff, some yards ahead, almost hidden by a rock. They could see him pointing towards the cliff-face. In an instant they had forgotten the tide, and they jumped and slithered over pools and rocks towards Barney, bladder wrack popping under their feet like machine-gun fire.

  “It’s not very big,” he called as they came up. Simon and Jane saw the deep cleft in the rock only when they were very close. It was not the kind of cave they had pictured in their minds. Narrow and triangular, it rose barely high enough for Barney to stand upright inside, and they themselves would certainly have to crouch to go in. Rough boulders lay heaped round the entrance, and water dripped from wet green weed coating the roof. They could not see very far inside.

  Jane said do
ubtfully, “Are you sure this is it?”

  “Of course it is,” Barney said positively. “There couldn’t be more than one.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Neither do I,” Simon said, “but I think this is the one all right. Look up above—you can just see a sort of green triangle at the top of the cliff where the grass grows over the edge by the rocks. We must be almost directly in line with the place where that hole comes out up there.”

  Jane looked, and looked down again quickly, shaken by the unnerving height of the cliff leaning over them out of the sky. “I suppose so.”

  Barney peered into the darkness. “It isn’t a cave at all really, just a hole, like at the top. Pouf”—he sniffed critically—“it smells all seaweedy and salty. And the sides are all wet and green and dripping. Good job we’re wet already.”

  “I don’t like it,” Jane said suddenly, staring hard at the dark entrance so small in the vast mass of the cliff.

  “What d’you mean, you don’t like it?”

  “It gives me the creeps. We can’t go in there.”

  “You can’t, you mean,” Simon said.

  “You’ll have to keep watch in case the tide turns. But I can.”

  “What about me?” Barney demanded indignantly. “I found it.”

  “D’you want to?” said Jane in horror.

  “With the grail in there? Who wouldn’t? Be much better if I tried,” he said persuasively to Simon, “I’m the smallest, and it’s jolly narrow. You might get stuck, and never get out again.”

  “Oh don’t,” said Jane.

  “If you go in, I’m going in after you,” Simon said.

  “Okay,” Barney said cheerfully. He had been so unutterably relieved ever since he found himself free of the clutches of the sinister Mr. Hastings that nothing else, in comparison, seemed frightening at all. “I wish we’d brought a flashlight, though.” He gazed speculatively into the cave. Within a few feet of the entrance it was black and impenetrable.

  “I wish we’d brought a rope,” Jane said unhappily. “Then if you did get stuck I could pull you out.”

  Simon put his hands in his pocket looking up at the sky, and began to whistle nonchalantly. They stared at him.

  “Well?”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Good job someone in the family’s got brains,” Simon said.

  “Who? You?”

  “I don’t know what you’d do without me.”

  “Oh come on,” Jane said impatiently, “you haven’t got a rope or a flashlight, so don’t pretend you have.”

  “I jolly nearly have.” Simon delved into the pocket of his shorts. “You know when we went through our pockets up there this morning to see if we had some string, and we only had that cotton of yours—well, I thought we ought to be a bit better equipped just in case. So when we were back at the house I pinched some of Father’s fishing-line. He didn’t take it all with him.” His hand emerged from his pocket clutching a tight-wound wad of thin brown line. “That’s as tough as any rope.”

  “I never thought of that,” Jane said, with new respect.

  “I’ve still got that old bit of candle too. But I bet you haven’t still got your matches.”

  Jane groaned. “No, I haven’t. They were in my duffle, and I left it at home. Oh bother.”

  “I thought you would,” Simon said, and with the smug flourish of a conjuror he produced a box of matches and the candle stump from his shirt pocket. Then his face fell. “Oh gosh, they’ve got wet.

  They must have been splashed when I slipped in that pool. The wick of the candle’s soaking, it won’t be any good. Still, the matches are all right.”

  “They’ll do fine,” Barney said encouragingly. “That’s smashing. Come on.”

  Simon took the telescope case from where he had tucked it under his arm and handed it to Jane. “You’d better take charge of the manuscript, Janey. If I dropped it in there we’d never find it again.”

  He looked out again at the sea. The rocks where they stood were even more like a causeway here, stretching out almost flat from the base of the cliff into the water. Only one hump of grey rock stood alone near the entrance of the cave.

  The water still lapped gently at the edge six or seven yards away, no nearer and no further than it had been when they first left the beach. Simon wondered nervously how much time was left before the tide would turn. “I reckon we’ve got about half an hour,” he said slowly. “After that we shall have to get away quick before the tide catches us. Come here, Barney, and hold still.”

  He found the loose end of the roll of fishing-line and tied it securely round Barney’s waist. “If you’re going to go first I can hold on to the line behind you.”

  “D’you think he ought to?” Jane said.

  Barney turned round and glared at her.

  “Well, I’m not awfully keen on the idea,” said Simon, “but he’s right about its being narrow, and he may be the only one who can get properly inside. It’s all right, I won’t lose him. Here—” He handed Jane the roll of line. “Don’t let it go slack.”

  “And don’t keep it too tight,” said Barney, making for the entrance, “or you’ll cut my middle in half.”

  Jane looked at her watch. “It’s nearly five o’clock. When you’ve been in there ten minutes I’ll pull on the line twice to tell you.”

  “Ten minutes!” said Barney in scorn. “We may have to go in for miles.”

  “You might suffocate,” said poor Jane.

  “That’s a good idea,” Simon said quickly, glancing at her face. “You pull twice, and if I pull back twice, it means we’re all right but we’re staying in there. If I pull three times, it means we’re coming out.”

  “And if I pull three times it means you’ve got to come out, because the tide’s turned.”

  “Fine. And four pulls from either end means a distress signal—not,” Simon added nastily, “that there’s going to be any need for it.”

  “All right,” Jane said. “Oh dear. Don’t be long.”

  “Well, we shall have to go slowly. But don’t get in a flap, nothing’s going to go wrong.” Simon patted her on the back, and followed as Barney, straining eagerly at the line round his waist like a dog on a leash, waved one hand briefly and disappeared into the mouth of the cave.

  • Chapter Fourteen •

  Barney blinked at the darkness. As his eyes grew accustomed to being out of the sunlight, vague objects took shape in the dark. He realized that the light from the entrance penetrated further inside than they had realised; and for the first few yards at least he could see the faint shine of the slimy green weed covering the walls and roof of the cave, and the glint of water lying along the bottom in a shallow unmoving stream.

  He moved warily forward, one hand up touching the roof and the other stretched out to one side. He could feel a slight steady pull on the line round his waist from Simon holding it behind him. Very loud in the enclosed silence of the cave he could hear the splash of their feet through the water, and his brother breathing.

  “Go carefully,” Simon said, behind him. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper, but the cave echoed his voice into a husking mutter that filled the space all around them.

  “I am.”

  “You might bump your head.”

  “You might bump yours. Mind this bit here, it comes down lower. Put your hand up on the roof and you’ll feel it.”

  “I can,” Simon said fervently. His neck was bent uncomfortably downwards; taller than Barney, he had to stoop slightly all the while to avoid hitting his head on the slimy rock above. Occasionally a large cold drop of water dripped down inside his shirt collar.

  “Isn’t it cold?”

  “Freezing.” Barney’s shorts were clinging clammily to the tops of his legs, and he felt the air chill through his shirt. He was finding it more and more difficult to make out any shapes around him, and soon he paused uneasily, feeling the darkness close in as if it were pressing
on his eyes. Groping upwards, his fingers could no longer feel the roof. Ahead of him it rose out of reach, and he clutched at air.

  “Wait a minute, Simon.” His voice came eerily back at him from all sides. “I think it gets higher here. But I can’t see a thing now. Have you got those matches?”

  Simon felt his way along the line to where Barney stood. He touched his shoulder, and Barney felt more comforted at the contact than he would have admitted even to himself.

  “Don’t move. I’m letting go of the line for a minute.” Simon groped in his pocket for the matches and opened the box, feeling the edges carefully to make sure he had it the right way up.

  The first two matches grated obstinately on the box as he tried to strike them, and nothing happened. The third flared up but broke as it did so, burning Simon’s fingers so that he dropped it with an exclamation before they could blink away the dazzle of the sudden light. There was a small hiss as it dropped into the water around their feet.

  “Buck up,” said Barney.

  “I’m going as fast as I can . . . ah, that’s it.”

  The fourth match was dry, and rasped into flame, flickering. Simon cupped his hand to shelter it. “Funny, there must be a draught in here. I can’t feel one.”

  “The match can. That’s good, it means there must be an opening somewhere at the other end. So it is the right cave after all.”

  Simon’s hand hid the dazzle of the little flame, and Barney peered hastily round in the wavering light. Their shadows danced huge and grotesque on the wall. He looked up, and took a few careful steps forward. “Hold it up . . . hey, come on, the roof does go up higher here, you’ll be able to stand upright.”

  Simon stepped cautiously towards him, bent over the match, and straightened his back with a gasp of relief. Then the match burned his fingers, and he dropped it. At once the darkness wrapped them like a blanket again.

  “Hang on, I’ll light another one.”

  “Well, wait a minute, we don’t want to waste them. I could see a bit of the way ahead when it went out, so we can go that far before you light the next.”