Читать книгу In the Secret Sea - William Edward Cule - Страница 6
ОглавлениеTHE BOTTOM OF THE GREAT PIT
Now and again the sensation comes back to me in my sleep, and I wake up with a start, my whole body bathed in a cold dew of dread. To me, the Great Pit has been a nightmare ever since.
I went hurtling down, with Johnny’s cry echoing in my ears; and I knew that the great fragment of rock was still at my feet, falling, falling with me. It was then that the terror came, in a swift rushing wave that seemed to still my heart and blind my eyes.
All this could only have taken one brief, breathless moment, for then sensation—bodily sensation—came back with a rush. There must have been a screen of some kind of shrub growing round the sides of the pit in the crevices of the rock, stretching up weak, hopeless shoots to the glimpses of light above. These brushed me as I hurtled down, calling me back to life with a rustling of leaves and a faint rending of twigs. With desperate instinct, rather than thought, I closed my hands upon them once, twice, thrice. Once I held them, and they held me. Then I felt them give way, relinquished my hold to get another, tried, and failed: tried again desperately, hung for one brief instant, my eyes full of dust and grime, my arms almost wrenched from their sockets; then went down, down like a plummet, till the waters of silence closed over me.
Those shrubs had saved my life and my reason, and they did the same service for Oliver. We had fallen a hundred and fifty feet, but had done it, as it were, in three stages. There was a brief agony of cold and fear and suffocation, but after that I was on the surface again, still alive, dashing the water from my eyes. Then, in the clinging cold and silence and darkness, I looked up and saw light. It was the faint light at the mouth of the pit, oval-shaped, like an egg, and seemingly not much larger. At the same instant a gasping voice came out of the darkness behind me.
“Frank!”
Oh, the joy of it that I was not alone! I could have wept for the relief it gave me. Instead, I gave a little cry, and instantly Oliver was at my side, breathless, but as real and ready as ever.
“Hurt?” he asked.
“N-no,” I spluttered. “Are you?”
“Not much——”
There was a long pause, while we recovered our breath. Oliver was touching me now, and he never left me till the danger had passed. It was then that I ceased to think, for I knew that he was thinking for both of us, and I knew, too, that his thinking could be trusted. Since I had come to know him I had trusted it often, and never in vain. He was only twenty-three, and I was over seventeen myself; but those six years had been for him full of hard fighting.
“We must get ashore,” he said at last. “I will lead and you will keep close. Good thing the water’s not very cold; but it’s much too cold to stay long in. Now, Frank.”
Without waiting for a reply, he struck out; and with a great fear of being left behind, I followed his lead. No, the water was not cold, but I had little time to wonder why, for another mystery was upon us. I knew that the pit was wider at the bottom than the top, but after a dozen long, steady strokes which sent a thousand strange, sibilant echoes from side to side of the great shaft, there was still water before me. Even when we had swum some twenty yards, and the egg-shaped fragment of light had disappeared, we had not reached the side.
If Oliver had not been there, I think I should have failed then; but he was there, striking into the darkness without a pause. Because I must keep near him, I struggled on against the chilling flood, the colder darkness, the growing terror. What else could I do?
I cannot tell how long it lasted, that ordeal of terror. Oliver said afterwards that it was ten minutes, but it seemed thousands. Once I almost shrieked as something touched me, some floating fragment of the vegetation I had torn down in my fall; but it might have been some giant devil-fish searching for me in the dark. And as my shriek was choked back, I struck out again with mad haste.
Then the voice spoke again before me. “Keep up, Frank. We’re going right.” At the same moment a current of cold air began to play upon my face. Cold air—just that, coming over the black water, out of the black nowhere. But there must be some passage here, to earth and light and life. Hurrah!
“Steady!” growled Oliver. “I touched bottom.”
A moment more and I touched it also; a minute after that and I was out of the water, prostrate upon a shelving verge of what seemed to be rough-edged stones and clinkers. Oliver had his hands upon me, feeling my face, my limbs, and at last holding my hands. He was breathing hard, like a spent man—just as I was.
“Thank God!” he said. “Thank God!” And, thus reminded, I repeated, like a child of six, the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Then for a time we simply rested, panting, not daring to move except to feel our bruised limbs and to wring the water from our hair and clothes; and when we moved at last it was by the result of Oliver’s silent thinking.
“This current of air,” he said. “If it ceases we shall be lost. Can you start?”
“I’m with you,” I replied promptly. “Is it stand or crawl?”
“Crawl, till we can see where we are. It’s safer. You keep close to me.”
Our eyes were beginning to distinguish outlines, and it seemed that we were in a cave. In front, where the breeze came from, was black darkness, to right and left rugged walls of rock, and above a rocky and uneven roof. Our first task was to crawl up the rough bank on which we had fallen, and try to take our bearings; our next to follow the course of that blessed breeze until we should find the outlet of our prison.
Very cautiously we moved upwards, until we were on almost level ground. I was glad to get away from that dark subterranean water. Then we moved forward, foot by foot, in the direction the breeze seemed to come from. And as we rose from the sheltering basin to the level ground, it blew still stronger and colder. There must be a free entrance somewhere.
The ground was very rough, and it required great care to move over it. I fancied it must be the bed of a stream—perhaps in the rainy season the subterranean pond into which we had fallen would overflow and rush away to another outlet by the road we were now taking. Somehow, somewhere, it would find its way to the sea. In this lay our hope. It was the sea we wanted, and the faces of our friends. Why, just think of it—if we were lucky, we might reach the bay and the John Duncan as soon as Johnny Tawell—or, perhaps, even before him!
As you see, I was beginning to think on my own account—and most of it was wrong!
We stumbled on for fifty yards, on a course that was slightly downwards. That, I thought, was right—water could not flow upwards, and we had climbed so high that we must be considerably above sea level still. It was awful to keep struggling on in the dark on such a path, but it was better than the water of the Great Pit, and we had the cool breeze for company. So we held steadily on—or unsteadily, rather—for that fifty yards; and then—then we reached a corner!
Yes, a corner. Not a sharp, right-handed corner, but a curve in the wall of rock leading round to another long cavern something like the first. But ah, it was utterly different after all. Oliver stood upright and pointed. There was a queer, strained note in his voice.
“The light!” he cried. “The light!”
Yes, the light. For that long cavern went down—sharply down—its course paved with great boulders and fragments of stone; and it was a long course, nearly a quarter of a mile long, as rugged and trying a journey as anyone might see in a lifetime. But we could see to the end; and the end of it was light—the welcome light of day! The long, long cave before us was like a great telescope, and there, at the end of it, cut sharply in a rugged circle, was the lost daylight. When I saw it I gasped with joy. I had to sit down on a boulder and rest a while before I could begin what seemed to be the last stage of our adventurous journey. And Oliver sat with me, still holding my hand.
Is there any need to describe it—that eager, headlong rush to the light, so slow in spite of its headlong eagerness? Heavens! what a mad course it was—that panting escape from the Pit of Darkness! We tore our hands on the sharp rock-edges, stumbled and fell again and again, bruised knees and shins and ankles and thighs till we were scratched and bleeding in a score of places. In a few minutes I was in a bath of perspiration, in spite of the clinging cold of my wet clothes; but, heedless of everything, I pounded on towards the light. I had lost my reason for the time, and was in a wild panic of hope and longing. Oliver, now the follower instead of the leader, had to keep close or lose me. He kept close, steadying me now and again with a word.
Before we reached the end I was thoroughly exhausted, but my efforts were not relaxed. Again and again I brushed away from my eyes the mist of sweat and steam, angry that anything should come for an instant between me and the light. And steadily the light-circle grew larger, until I could distinguish objects without; and we saw at last that there were cliffs there—cliffs with the steep, wall-like faces which we had seen everywhere on the island.
I had no time to be disappointed—no time to consider that I had expected to find the open sea and the great waste of the Atlantic. I was on the threshold of success, too eager and exultant to think. I scrambled wildly on at a breakneck pace, and in a moment more was standing at the mouth of the cave.
Then I rubbed my eyes.
We were on the brow of a steep hill, at the top of a rude ravine which led by an easy course—an old water-course, no doubt—to the beach below. And at the first glance we saw, or seemed to see, the bay in which we had left the John Duncan, its water as smooth as a millpond, and with the familiar steep beach of dark-coloured dust and pebbles. And it seemed to me, in that first glance, that I saw the old John Duncan too, lying just as I had left her. But I rubbed my eyes, because even at the first glance some things were different.
The bay seemed larger—considerably larger. It was at least twice as far to the opposite side. But the curious part of it was that the John Duncan was smaller—considerably smaller; more curious still, she was utterly changed in appearance! And there was no Maud Muller!
It was then that I rubbed my eyes. And after that I looked again, and laughed weakly. Had a miracle happened? What else could have changed our one old black funnel with the grey bars into two dingy white ones? Then I rubbed my eyes again—and immediately saw something else.
Just below me and a little to the right, well up from the beach, was a house. Yes, a house. Only a small one, it is true, but still a house! It had a roof of corrugated zinc. That was the first thing I saw; and then I saw that it was built of wood, very neatly and trimly, built with doors and windows all complete.
I felt dazed and silly. The bay and the ship and the bungalow—were they a dream? I turned to look at Oliver, and when I saw his face I saw that I must be awake—or else he was dreaming too. It is impossible to describe the astonishment of his look.
He stared at me blankly. I gave another glance at the ship, and my head began to swim. Could it be possible that I was dreaming—that the ship and the bay and the little house were not real life at all, but a bit of scenery out of dreamland? I tried to pull myself together, tried to be sane and sensible.
And in that pause something happened. The door of the house—the bungalow—just below us, opened, and a man came out.
