He puffed hard at his great pipe, and seemed to be turning the matter over in his head. The lake was as silent as the waters of death; not a breath of wind stirred in the hills; the sun continued to shine with diminishing splendour; while the glow upon the heights changed from a deep crimson to wondrous hues of pink and violet.
"Well, Roddy, and what do you say? You take a long time about it."
"I was thinking, old chap."
"Of what?"
"Of the gun that was fired from the headlands. Suppose it was at Billy, after all? Suppose Mitchell's lot are on this side?"
"Their ship's not, anyway. Take my glasses and see. There's a yacht lying at anchor right over against Black's house. Why, my glass would almost show you a man on her decks; and it's sense to say that where the yacht is, there will the best part of the crew be. You don't suppose Jo Mitchell would desert his ship?"
"No, but——"
"But what, Roddy?"
"Well, it's odd that we don't see any men. I've been watching the place ever since we dropped down here, and there isn't a sign of life anywhere—not as much as a hand's breadth of smoke nor the smallest of boats. They wouldn't have turned in at this time of night——"
"Of course they wouldn't; they'd be all ashore, eating."
"Tinned meat, I suppose. Didn't you say that you saw some smoke when you climbed on the boom last night?"
I had to admit it; and really it was very odd that there was no witness of any kind to human occupation of the galleries on the far shore. My glasses were powerful enough to show me the yacht very plainly, and, beyond the yacht, the steep cliff wherein Black had built his home. I could see the iron ladder by which you gained the height, the rude windows cleft in the rock, and, farther up the shore, the low buildings in which the pirates had been housed. These buildings were now a heap of blackened ruins, for the Government ships had destroyed them; but it was odd, nevertheless, that no human being showed himself anywhere upon that side; nor could I gainsay Roddy's view of it.
"You're right about the place," I admitted at length, "but that doesn't alter my opinion. If we're going to lie here and speculate as to what might happen, we may as well throw up the sponge at once. Let's risk it while we're in the mood, Roddy. We shall never get a better chance; and as for Mitchell's men being on this side of the water—well, I'm ready to take my luck with them——"
"You're always ready to take your luck anywhere Scribe. Don't think me a tenderfoot—I was a bit anxious, that's all; but, if you give the word, we'll go at once."
"Then I give it now, and luck go with us. Remember, one call brings me back to you. We mustn't muddle it. I shall know there's danger if I hear you whistle, and that's all you have to remember."
He said that he understood; and upon that we set out. The climb to the mouth of the caves was light work enough, and what we had seen (or had not seen) upon the farther shore encouraged us to go with little prudence.
Every step now carried me nearer to a recognition of my surroundings. I could point to the track around the lake by which Osbart and I had first come to this place; I saw the narrow ledge upon which a man must walk to reach the outermost of the galleries; I recognized the hill wherefrom we had discovered the distant shore and the ocean beating upon it. And there I left Roddy.
It was not a time for sentiment, and yet I think we were both a little troubled at that parting. For a moment I thought he was wistful to call me back after I had left him; but when I turned round he had found a nook behind a boulder of the rock, and there he sat smoking his great pipe as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world for him to be playing a sentry's part. Twenty yards farther on I gained the ledge of the rock and the entrance to the cavern. A wan light enveloped me immediately, my eyes saw but dimly in the deep shadows, and I stood wondering if I would have the courage after all.
Remember how different a thing it had been when the mad Doctor went with me upon a similar journey. I had nothing to fear then from unknown enemies; I knew little of what I must see or of the horror of the place. Now, dread of the caverns fell upon me heavily at the outset; I groped my way fearfully, while there was ever with me the dread that I might lose my bearings and be lost here in this dismal place beyond any hope of seeing the sun again.
I say that what affected me chiefly was the dim light within the cavern and the almost black darkness of the narrow passage beyond it. There had been ship's lanterns lighting this when Osbart took me there; and some of them remained, as my hands told me while I felt my way by the jagged wall. I struck a match I saw that the lantern was all rusted, while water dripped from the roof, and the path itself was littered by boulders of the rock. Thenceforth the way became more difficult. I stumbled and came near to falling more than once. The darkness grew so profound that I could not see my hand before my face.
And what foreboding through it all; what listening for any sound that might speak of friend or foe; what fears of the void and its unknown terrors! Sometimes I would say that I must slip through a crevasse of the rock and fall headlong to vast depths. Or I would disturb a boulder, and hear it go clanging down behind me, filling the cavern with its thunders, and setting my heart aflutter as though other hands than mine had hurled it. When light came at last, I feared it almost as much as the dark. What truths of this black world might it not reveal? And I knew that the dead lay near me, and that I must look upon their faces.
These fears I put behind me a little as the light waxed stronger, and it became apparent to me that I was alone in the cavern. Now I could see that the passage led into a large apartment, one I remembered to have visited with the Doctor, and I did not fail to notice that the door of this inner cave was fended by a great stone, which had been rolled back many years ago, but still lay so that a man who would enter must clamber over it. This I did quickly enough, anxious to make an end of it; and no sooner was I upon the other side than I stood in the presence of the dead, and knew that my goal was achieved. Achieved—if it be not irony to write the word. For was not that the moment when I heard the thundering echo of the great stone as it rolled back to its place, and, turning, knew that it had trapped me in that fearful den, the prisoner of the impotent dead, whose staring eyes mocked me as they lay?
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORDEAL OF THE CAVERN
A man thinks of many things when dire peril con-fronts him; perhaps of his own safety last of all. I supposed at the first that the great stone had stood upon a balance, and had been so nicely poised that my weight set it sliding to the aperture. A second thought put this by, and would have it that human hands had done the thing and trapped me beyond any hope of release.
Of the suppositions, the latter was the more dreadful. It seized me in the grip of fear and sent me running back to the stone, my wit clean gone from me and my heart beating wildly. I thought that human eyes were watching me, and that men listened for my words. In a paroxysm of terror, I hurled myself at the stone, and pressed upon it until my hands were cut and bleeding and my clothes torn. Then I reeled back, and, sinking upon the floor of the cavern, I cried aloud to Roddy, as though he would hear me, out there by the lake-side.
Here I make no defence. The Cave of the Dead at Ice Haven is as terrible a mausoleum as the world knows. Three walls of it shaped from the rock, the fourth is of pure ice, and in this wall the bodies of the pirates lie. Time does not change them; to-day they are as yesterday; and all the mockery of life is to be read in their staring eyes. You might even think