Chapter III: Open Sesame

I had a vision sometimes of our tight little island lying on the sea like a round of bread and butter on a plate, and the Angel of the Storm amusing himself by biting patterns out of its edges. The coast in our part of the world was particularly inviting to him, because, I suppose, it was crumb, and not rocky with crust like other parts. Anyhow he never flew near without setting his teeth in it somewhere, and on this occasion to such gluttonous effect that he must have blown himself out before he had fairly settled down to his meal. His attack was as short as it was violent. For miles north and south the cliffs had been torn and gulped--only the birds, mapping them from above, could have said into what new fantastic outline. Landmarks were gone, and little bays formed where had been promontories. Here and there a fisherman’s boat had been licked out of its winter perch, that that same angel might play bounce-ball with it on the cliffs until it was broken to bits. The wreck and flotsam on the shore were indescribable; and sad and ugly was the sight of more than one drowned mariner entangled in them. I turn my memory gladly from such retrospects, to concentrate it upon those features of the havoc which most concern this history.

Waterside folk are a strangely incurious and fatalistic race. Once having satisfied themselves after a storm that their craft, disposed here and there in winter quarters, are untouched, the changes wrought on their sea-front interest them only in so far and so long as those changes mean profitable wreckage. When that is all gathered, they withdraw again to their winter burrows and winter occupations, and leave the foreshore to its natural desolation.

At least, that is what Dunberry did after the gale and within a couple of days following it, than which no longer was needed, it appeared, to secure any salvage worth the landing. For there is this characteristic of great tempests, that from their destructive rage they yield a poorer harvest of “whole grain,” so to speak, than do moderate ones. The latter, maybe, deposit some literal pickings in the shape of crates, barrels, seamen’s chests, etc., yet compact; the former for the most part mere _disjecta membra_. It followed, therefore, that when Harry and I next visited the beach--which, as it happened, he having been away, and I confined to the house with a beastly cold, we did not do until the afternoon of the third day succeeding that night of uproar--we found we had the whole place virtually to ourselves.

Uncle Jenico, who, from his anxious concern for me, had also kept at home during the interval, came with us, full of suppressed eagerness to glean the torn fields of shingle for relics. I think I only realized the self-restraint which his affection must have imposed upon him in those two days, when I saw the almost childish joy with which he greeted the sight of the weedy litter strewn, as far as the eye could reach, along the shore.

“Why, Richard!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands, while his spectacles seemed to twinkle again, “here’s a chance indeed! It’s an ill wind that blows nobody---- Poor souls, poor souls! I feel like robbing the grave to take such advantage of their misery.”

His countenance fell a moment; but his mood was not proof against the stupendous prospect.

“The sea’s a pretty big grave, sir,” said Harry. “You might as well have scruples about digging gold out of the earth, seeing we’re all buried there.”

“That’s true,” said Uncle Jenico, with serious delight. “That’s quite true, my boy. I only hope I’ve not left it to too late.”

This gave me a little qualm.

“Shall I come with you, uncle?” I said.

“No, Dicky,” he answered; “no, no, no. You and Harry amuse yourselves as you will. I wouldn’t deny myself for anything the gratification of the treat I’m going to bring you by-and-by. It’s selfish, no doubt; but--but I’d rather be alone.”

And he hobbled away, calling out to us not to let our expectations run _too_ high, or he might be defrauded of his opportunity to surprise us.

“He’s a real trump,” said Harry. “I hope you think so, Dick.”

“Of course I do,” I answered, rather testily, and began to whistle.

“That’s all right, then,” said he. “And now let’s explore.”

It was a fine, still afternoon, with the tide at quiet ebb, and a touch of frost in the air. The sun, low down, burned like a winter fire, and gleamed with a light of sadness on the ribs of the gaunt wreck lying far away on the Weary Sands. She was visible only at low water; at high being completely submerged. No one, so far as I knew, had yet had the curiosity or venturesomeness to row out and investigate the poor castaway. It was just plain to see, by the aid of glasses, that she had broken her back on the drift, and that only her stern half remained, wedged into the sand. But what her name or condition Dunberry had not had the energy to inquire.

We were standing at gaze at the foot of the Gap, and when Uncle Jenico went north, we, in obedience to his wish to be left alone, turned our faces down the coast. But we had not taken a score or so of steps when we hooted out simultaneously over the sight that was suddenly revealed to us. The storm had bolted a great hunk, good ten feet through at its thickest, of the Mitre, obliterating the already half-effaced step-way by which Rampick had been wont to ascend, and laying bare, high up in the cliff, a mass of broken masonry. From the character of this last it was evident at a glance what had happened. The seaward limit to the crypts of the old abbey had been shorn through, and the extreme vaulting of that ancient underworld exposed. Nor was this all. The well, now thus further isolated from the hill which had once contained it, was grown, from the washing away of the sand at its base, an apparent five feet or so taller, and was leaning outwards at a distinctly acuter and more ominous angle with the shore.

We stood excited a moment, then, without a word, raced to get a closer view. The wrack and downfall, as we looked up at their traces, must have been stupendous; yet so great had been the pulverising force of the waves, the mighty silt from them, except for a few tumbled blocks of stone, was all dispersed and distributed about the shore below, so that a new cliff face, clear of ruin, went up in a pretty clean sweep from beach to summit sixty feet above. From the lower curve of this, where it ran out and down into the sand, the well projected, not ten feet above us, like a little tower of Pisa; and yet thirty feet higher, at a point in the hill face about on a level with the well top, gaped the jagged ruin of masonry which the storm had laid bare.

“Dick!” whispered Harry--“Dick!” (He was gulping and gripping my arm hard, as he stared up.) “Supposing we could climb to there and look in!”

“Yes!” I choked back. I knew what was in his mind; and the thought fascinated while it frightened me horribly.

“I’ve never seen a Dutchman,” he said. “Mrs. Puddephatt, she--it would be fun to find out the truth. What are they like?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, shivering. “They wear lots of breeches, I believe. But it’s no good. The place is all choked up. You can see for yourself.”

There was no apparent entrance that way, indeed. The contour of the vaulting was roughly discernible, it is true, but so stopped with mud and _débris_ as to offer no visible passage.

“Besides,” I went on, swallowing fast and trying to escape from the fluttering spell the mere suggestion had laid upon me,--“whether it was an earthquake or gunpowder, it’s all the same. It must be just all squash and ruin inside; and--and the things----” I stuck, feeling that I dare not speculate further.

Harry released my arm, and for some time looked down, making thoughtful patterns with his foot in the sand.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, raising his face suddenly. “But I’d mighty like to see.”

We were both rather silent for the rest of the afternoon; and, though we neither of us alluded to the subject for a day or two afterwards, it was evident it stood between us. We avoided the spot, too; until one evening a long ramble brought us back by the shore past it. Then, by a common impulse, we stopped, and stood gaping silent up once more. The light from the sinking sun smote level upon the face of the cliff, so that it stood out as bright as a grate back. Its surface, quite dried from the tempest, reflected no glaze of water. The rivulets of mud, which had flowed over and sealed the scar of ruin above, were hardened like plaster, though shrinkage had opened black fissures in them here and there.

Harry, softly whistling, left me suddenly, and, with his hands in his pockets, toiled indifferently up the slope to the well foot. Here, still whistling, he began kicking round the base; but in a moment desisted and called to me. I went up, and he fell upon his knees, and set to scraping with his fingers.

“See?” he said, stopping.

“No; what?” I answered.

“Why, look, you bat!” said he. “Nothing under; nothing deeper. Here’s the last bottom course of the thing; the foundation stones, or I’m a----”

He checked himself, grinning.

“I was going to say ‘Dutchman,’” said he; “and, for all we know, they may be listening up there.”

“O, don’t be a beast!” I exclaimed, with a wriggle of discomfort.

He chuckled again.

“Well, anyhow,” he said, “here’s the old well just standing on its end, like a drain-pipe with a tilt to it. If we brought spades and dug away underneath on the outside, it would fall--and on the top of us, too; but that’s a detail. Wonder the storm didn’t finish it, don’t you? Must have come pretty near to.”

As he spoke, staring up at me, he suddenly uttered a soft exclamation, and scrambling to his feet, pulled at my arm.

“Look there!” he whispered. “Don’t move!”

I followed the direction of his hand, which was pointing to the scar in the cliff-face above. I could see nothing.

“Hush, you old fool!” he said impatiently. “Keep quiet!”

I did not stir; till, at the end of a long interval, something made me start involuntarily. It was a wink--a flutter--a motion of some sort, I knew not what, on the hill front.

“Did you see?” whispered Harry.

“Yes,” I muttered back. “What was it?”

He ran down the slope to the sand, and I followed at a leap, thinking he meant that the cliff was falling. But when I saw his face I knew that some excitement other than fear was moving him.

“It was the badger,” he said, turning sharp on me. “Now, do you understand what that means?”

Perhaps I had a glimmering; but I shook my head feebly to repudiate it.

“Why!” he cried reproachfully. “Dicky, you gowk! If he goes to earth at the top and comes and puts his nose out here, what does it mean but that the crypts ain’t as blocked as we supposed!”

“There must be a passage through, of course,” I murmured.

Harry nodded, primming his lips. “Well?” said he.

“Why, it don’t follow that where a badger can go, we can.”

“It does with me,” he said shortly.

An odd little silence fell between us. Then Harry turned away, and began to move off, whistling. At a bound I was after him, with a furious red face, and, seizing his arm, had whipped him round.

“I’m going to try to get into the hill up there,” I cried. “If you’re afraid to come too, stop behind like a coward!”

He stared at me amazed; then fell a’ grinning.

“I never said you were a coward,” he retorted.

“But you meant it,” I answered, fuming.

We were bristling, actually, as on that far-off day when we had first come into collision. Our fists were clenched; the backs of our necks tingled; it was really a pregnant moment.

But the good old fellow resolved it, and in the best way possible. The fire suddenly left his eyes.

“O, Dick,” he said; “what asses we are! Look here, I’ll tell you--I should funk it going up there alone, and you wouldn’t, it seems; that’s the truth. I only wanted to dare you, for my own sake.”

“O, all right!” I said, pocketing my fists, and pretty ashamed of myself. I kicked the sand about, not knowing how to escape the situation gracefully. At last I in my turn blurted out: “What rot this is! Let’s forget it all, and just discuss ways and means.”

“You really intend to try?” said Harry, his face relighting.

“If I die for it now,” I answered.

“O, well!” he said, heaving a profound sigh. “It’s simple enough. We’ll just climb up there, and say ‘open sesame,’ and walk in.”

This little inspiration to identify our adventure with Ali Baba’s was quite a happy one. Not forty Dutch smugglers, but forty beautiful Persian thieves with scimitars and waxed moustaches! It tinctured with romance at once the thought of the ugly sights it was possible we might encounter. Our half fearful design became, in a flash of coloured light, a tingling conspiracy.

It was too late, of course, to attempt anything that evening. But the following afternoon was a half-holiday with us, and quite apt to our purpose. In the interval we secured some candles and a box of the friction matches then lately come into use, as also, privately, Uncle Jenico’s geological hammer, a sturdy tool with a heavy butt and a long steel pick to balance its head. And with these, and nothing else whatever but our trust in ourselves, we issued forth after a hasty early dinner, and no word said to anybody, to dare and do.

We had resolved, after consultation, to make the attempt from above rather than below; because, in the first place, we should be less likely to attract attention, and, in the second, because a descent of twenty feet appeared easier of accomplishment than a climb of thirty up that slippery glacis. So we started, unregarded of any one, as we supposed, by way of the valley, and were not long in reaching the brow of the Mitre where it overlooked the well and the recent landfall.

It was all strangely altered here, and, near the edge, risky footing at the best. But we stole up cautiously, and, going upon our stomachs the last yard or two, looked down. Below us, at a rather giddy distance, projected some spars and ledges of the fractured masonry. Fortunately, however, the interval between us and them was not balked by any bulge in the cliff, but showed a smooth descent, and not too sheer for the essay. Still, it did not do to dwell upon it.

“Are you ready?” I whispered. “I’m going down.”

“No, you aren’t,” said Harry. “Me first.”

I only answered by crooking my elbow to keep him back.

“Don’t be a fool!” he protested. “We shall break away, and both go faster than we want, if you aren’t careful.”

I made no reply but to resist him doggedly, till at last, with a grunt, he let me go, and I turned, lying flat-faced, and swung my legs over the precipice.

“O, you old brute!” he said. “Well, go easy, then, and dig your toes in.”

And with that I let go and slid away, clawing and scratching like a cat coming down a tree. It was just to fasten on and commit one’s self to luck, which, fortunately for me, directed my feet to a ledge, on which I brought up, gasping and spitting out dirt. But once secure of my hold, and in a state to look about me, I was relieved to find that the position was much more possible than it had seemed either from above or below, the projecting spits of stonework being more and more pronounced than had showed at a distance.

I took a minute to get my wind, and then called up to Harry to follow; but he was already on his way. I saw him coming at a risky pace, and by a slightly divergent course, which he had taken to avoid me. It would have carried him clear of the ruin altogether had I not, at the psychologic moment, clapped my hand to the seat of his small-clothes and checked his descent.

“O!” he howled, “let go!”

“I won’t!” I cried. “Don’t be an ass! Stick your foot out here!”

With a desperate effort he managed to wriggle oblique, and in a moment we were standing together on the ledge.

“That was give and take,” he panted. “Like being saved from drowning by a shark. Can’t say your bark’s worse than your bite.”

I chuckled so that I was near falling off our perch, till a sudden thought sobered me.

“Supposing, after all, we can’t get in, or up or down neither?” I said dismayed. “A pretty picture we shall make, stuck up here.”

“Well, it’s too late to think of that now,” answered Harry, coolly. “Lend me a hand while I kick.”

He let out on the wall of mud in front, which we had hoped was just a mask or screen hiding a cavity behind; but his foot only sunk to the ankle in it without effect.

“So there!” he said. “We must look for a better place, that’s all.”

We were standing, so far as we could judge, about midway up the groining of the vault, and right under the apex, a little above and to the right of us, gaped a small round fissure.

“See?” said Harry, excitedly; “that’s the place. It don’t go perpendicular like the others, which means that it’s sunk away from some support above it. Hold me, now.”

I clutched him the best I could, gripping a stone with my other hand, and he brought the big hammer from his jacket pocket, and poised himself, standing high on his toes. “Open sesame!” says he, and struck with all the force he could muster on the soil just under the hole. The result made him stagger, for he had expected some resistance, and there was none. The whole top of a mound of silt, which stopped the neck, it seemed, of the decapitated crypts, and into the thick base of which he had first struck his foot, broke away and fell inwards, revealing an aperture, already, under that one blow, large enough for a man to crawl through.

Harry, recovering himself, quietly repocketed the tool, and turned to me. His face was a little white, but his mouth was set as grim as sin.

“It’s my turn,” he said. “Think you can give me a leg up?”

It was no use my disputing, as he was on the right side. Working with infinite caution and difficulty on that perilous eyrie, I managed to stoop, and, getting my hands under one of his feet, levered him slowly up, while he drew on every projection he could reach, until he was able to claw his arms into the hole and hang on.

“Now,” came his voice out, muffled and hollow, “one shove, and----”

I drove with the word; dig went his feet and knees; he sprawled convulsively a moment; got hold; the mound jerked and sunk a little under him, a clatter of _débris_ went down the cliff face, and he was in.

Almost in the same instant his face, hot and staring, re-emerged, and then his arms.

“Here,” he panted. “Can you reach?”

Not by a couple of feet could I.

“Hold tight and catch me,” I said. “I’m going to jump.”

Fixing my eyes on him, and crouching to the lowest I dared, I sprang, and he snatched and gripped my wrists.

“Now!” he gasped; and instantly the both of us were battling and struggling, he to hold me firm, and I to get way on and leverage.

For a minute the issue was doubtful; the mound sunk and crumbled still lower; I clawed frantically with my toes, my legs going like a frog’s on a slippery basin. But at last I got hold, and a little ease to my lungs; and so, hauling on to the hands held out to me, and wriggling up foot by foot, was drawn into the opening, now much enlarged, and crawling through, rolled, tangled up with Harry, down a slope into darkness.