"That's an amazing spectacle yonder!"
"I'm of your opinion," said Fisher.
"And the tale of the Spanish woman at Monaco was true—she's a wrecker! Well, she must be a cute woman, and the coast-guard here must be a fine service—to make money in."
"I can hardly believe it," said Fisher, "though I've seen it with my own eyes."
"That I understand," said Messenger. "The whole thing has come upon me like a thunderclap. Why, look at it; we, who thought ourselves just about a hundred miles from anywhere, have plumped down upon a community of cut-throats, whose number it would be a waste of time to calculate. Don't you see that if one of these men saw us we shouldn't have ten minutes to live?"
"Would they be likely to guess about the bullion?" asked Fisher speculatively.
"Guess about it? What nonsense! Of course they would. The woman plays a double part. I can see the whole of it. She's got a gang round her here who deal with ships, and she spends the profits at Monaco. That's an idea to dream of, my boy; it's a stupendous idea! If I'd have met that creature twenty years ago, we might have made what the society papers call a pretty couple."
He had dropped into satire for a moment; but his mood quickly turned to one of great seriousness.
"Hal," said he, as they climbed down from the window of rock, "there's to be little sleep for us to-night. It's true we should look for Kenner now, but who can say whether he's afloat or ashore, alive or dead? and, as there may be days to wait, I want to know where the path which runs through the cliff here leads to. Did you notice that all the boats shot out from the shore not a mile below us? Well, if there's a camp there, the road, which we know nothing about, may lead to it; and in that case we might have a visit before morning. I dare not even think what they would do if they learned about the wreck."
"Is there time to get away with the gold now?" said Fisher.
"No, I don't think so; it seems to me that we ran an almighty risk every time we put the old boat out, though we didn't know it. Luck has been with us so far; we must trust to it a little longer."
They had now come to the cave again, and found Burke and the negro fast asleep. Embers of the wood glowed upon the rock; but these they doused, and, having made every thing trim for concealment, they took their pistols, a length of rope, and some spirit in one of the flasks, and set out quickly on their journey.
XX. THE MAN BY THE DOOR
The night was one of wind and storm, the sky being scoured by cumulose clouds which permitted the moon's light but at intervals; and blasts whistled dismally through the gullies of the hills. During the first stage of the journey the path of the ravine which the man and the lad trod continued as a parallel of the sea; but at the distance of a third part of a mile or less from the camp there was a sharp turn of it; and there a more open way, bearing evidences of human handiwork, rose with an easy gradient toward the highland. The new road had a width of six feet even at the narrows of it, and was easy to walk upon, though strewn with boulders and often wet with the flashing cascades which gushed from the softer rock. As for the walls, they, in the moments when a glow of the moon's rays struck down into the chasm, shone with the fire of jasper and of quartz and of ore of antimony; and through the canopy of peaks the stars were seen clothed with an infinite brilliance and beauty.
I have said that the broader path appeared at the outset to lead to the highland and away from the sea, but a longer exploration of it disclosed many windings and labyrinthic passages; so that the two presently lost knowledge of their situation, or of the direction in which the way was carrying them. They now found it necessary to bring great caution to the work, more especially in the intervals when the path lay hid in utter darkness; and often they stood quite still to listen for the sound of voices or of others moving; but the place was possessed of a great silence, broken only by the sough of the wind and the splash of the water where the mountain streams fell toward the bay.
It must have been at a distance of at least a mile from the haven that the first decided change in the nature of the path was manifest. At this point there was a great increase of its steepness, the gradient being so sharp that it was a labour to walk upright; and there were even rugged steps which bore the stamp of antiquity upon them, and were so hid with rocks and stones that the possibility of their having been in common usage was out of the question. The ravine itself was now comparatively shallow, the walls being nowhere more than twenty or thirty feet in height, and they fell back so much at their summits that the shrubs and trees of the higher plain were clearly visible; and this new state was unaltered until at last, with longer flight of the almost impossible steps, the path ended in a great door of wood, upon the top of which a row of iron spikes was set.
At the foot of the door Messenger stopped, and, motioning to Fisher to crouch down, he listened with a strained ear for some minutes. In this place, as lower in the gully, there was singing of wind, which seemed almost to cry in the hills; but the gale was intermittent, and when both of them had listened patiently for more than a quarter of an hour, the sound of dipping oars came up as from some deep chasm behind the barrier. It was a momentary sound, and was lost again almost as they heard it; yet its import seemed considerable, and was deepened at another fall of the blast, in which the crying of men one to the other was unmistakably audible.
"Hark!" said Messenger in a whisper; "could that be any thing else but a man hailing from a boat? We appear to have come upon a colony."
"I wonder what's behind the door?" asked Fisher naturally.
"I'll tell you in five minutes," said the other, "if it's to be told at all. Give me a back while I shin up the rock here."
It was no very difficult work to obtain foothold on the rock at either side of the decaying gate, and when the Prince had once come within reach of the spikes, he held to them easily, standing with one foot upon a natural ledge, and using a loop of the rope hitched over the iron as a support for the other. But Fisher continued below and when Messenger did not speak for many minutes, he began to conclude that he had fathomed the secret of the voices.
"Prince," asked he at length in a whisper which was half a shout, "can you see anything?"
"Not so loud!" replied the other, bending down to answer. "I think there are men below, but I'll tell you presently. Take another twist with the rope and pull yourself up. That's it! Now what do you make of it?"
Fisher was then beside him, placed much as he was, but at the opposite post of the gate. At the first glance he could see little beyond the spikes, for the darkness was intense, and a great wall of cliff loomed up at a distance of some fifty yards from their standing-place; but when the bank of cloud passed off the face of the moon, the whole scene was illumined sharply. It was now clear that their path was a disused one, but formerly had led unchecked to a great creek of the sea; and the two were now looking down to this creek, but from a vast height, since the path broke into the northern wall of the fjord almost at its summit. Thus it was that they saw, both above and below their standing-place, the glow of light upon a lagoon-like basin of water; but directly beneath them the view downward was obstructed by a projecting roof, as of some building hugging to the very sides of the rock; and the stone parapet of this was not more than ten feet below them.
I, when reading the papers which deal with these moments of episode, have often thought that the whole future of the men who survived the Semiramis might have been different had Messenger quieted the curiosity which led him to cross this gate. If the projection of the roof had permitted him to see straight down into the creek, there can be no doubt that he had returned immediately to the haven, and rested there until Kenner's coming was a fact, or at least until there had been news of him; but, being unable to see more than deeply fissured walls of whitish rock and the top of a building of stone, he