HOW WE WENT TO EARTH
So presently we set out, all laden to the extent of our powers, and went first to Belfontaine, since our way lay past it. And there my mother fell gratefully on Carette and me, as though she had feared she might never see either of us again, and I was well pleased to see the tender feeling that lay between these two who were dearest to me in all the world.
"Wherever George Hamon puts you you will be safe," said my mother, at which Uncle George's face shone happily, "and I hope it will not be for long."
"Not for long," nodded my grandfather, with assurance. "We must give Monsieur Torode business of his own to attend to nearer home. Once Peter Port knows all we know, his fat will be in the fire."
"And the sooner the better," said Carette.
"And Krok?" I asked, tardily enough, though not through lack of thought of him.
"Your grandfather thinks he must have broken a blood-vessel yesterday. He is in there."
THE CHASM OF THE BOUTIQUES. "The tide was still churning among its slabs and boulders."
And I went in, and found him sitting up in great excitement at all the talking. I shook him very heartily by the hand and clapped him on the back and told him how much we were indebted to him, and how it was his prompt warning that enabled me to get across to Herm before they set their patrol boats—and very briefly of what had passed and was toward, and so left him, content and cheerful.
My mother would have added to our supplies, but we had as much as we could carry, and enough, we thought, for the term of our probable imprisonment. So we bade her farewell, and went on across the fields, past La Moinerie towards the Eperquerie.
"We are going to the Boutiques," I said.
"My Boutiques," said Uncle George, with a laugh. And, instead of going on to that dark chasm whose steep black walls and upstanding boulders lead one precariously into the caves with which we were familiar, he turned aside to another narrower gash in the tumbled rocks, and we stood on the brink wondering where he would take us. For, well as we knew the nooks and crannies thereabouts, we had never found entrance here.
We stood looking down into the narrow chasm. The tide was still churning among its slabs and boulders, and the inner end showed no opening into the cliff, nothing but piles of rounded pebbles and stranded tangles of vraic. We thought he had made a mistake.
But he looked quietly down into the boiling pot below, and said, "We have still an hour to wait. The tide is higher than I thought." So we sat on the short salt turf and waited.
"Tiens!" said Carette, pointing suddenly. And looking, we saw three boats pull out from the channel between Herm and Jethou. One came past us towards the north-east, and Uncle George made us lie flat behind gorse cushions till it was out of sight round Bec du Nez, though by crawling a little way up the head we could see it lying watchfully about a mile away. Another went off round Little Sercq to stop any communication with Jersey. The third lay in the way between Sercq and Peter Port.
"M. Torode shuts the doors," said my grandfather tersely. "B'en! we will try in the dark."
Between the softness of the turf and the heat of the sun and my great weariness, I was just on the point of falling asleep, when Uncle George came back from a look at his cleft, and picked up his loads, and said, "Come!" and five minutes later we were standing behind him in the salt coolness of the little black chasm, among the slabs and boulders and the fresh sea pools. And still we saw no entrance.
But he went to the inner side of a great slab that lay wedged against the wall of the chasm, and, stooping there, dragged out rock after rock, cunningly piled so that the waves could not displace them, until a small opening was disclosed behind the leaning slab. It was no more than three feet high, and we had to creep in on our hands and knees, which my grandfather, from his size and stiffness, found no easy matter.
The tunnel led straight in for a space of twenty feet or so, and then struck upwards, with a very rough floor which made no easy crawling ground, and a roof set with ragged rocks for unwary heads. The little light that came in round the corner of the slab in the dark chasm very soon left us, and we crawled on in the dark, hoping, one of us at all events, that the road was not a long one. And suddenly we breathed more freely and found a welcome space above our heads.
Uncle George struck flint and steel and lit a candle, and we found ourselves in a long narrow chamber, which looked just a fault in the rocks, or the space out of which the softer stuff had sunk away. The roof we could not see, but from the slope of the walls on either side I thought they probably met at a point a great way up, and the narrow crack of a cave ran far beyond our sight.
"My Boutiques," said Uncle George, "and no man—no living man but myself has ever been here till now, so far as I know." And round the walls we saw a very large number of neatly piled kegs and packages, at which my grandfather said, "Ah ha, mon beau!" and Uncle George smiled cheerfully in the candle-light.
"The Great Boutiques lie over there," he said, pointing. "There are communications, high up along the cross shelves. But they need not trouble you. I am quite certain no man but myself knows them. So if you hear the waves tumbling about in the big cave you don't need to be frightened."
"And how far does this go?" asked my grandfather, trying to see the end.
"Right through the Eperquerie. It runs into a water cave there. Its mouth is below tide level, but sometimes the light comes through. If you want brandy, Phil, broach a keg. If you want more tobacco, open a package."
"And water?" asked Carette.
"About fifty yards along there on the right in a hollow place. You can't miss it."
"Keep your hearts up, my children," said my grandfather. "You will be quite safe here. Our work lies outside, and we must get back. George will come to you as soon as the way is clear. God be with you!"
"You are quite sure there are no ghosts about, Uncle George?" asked Carette in a half-scared whisper, for she was still a devout believer in all such things.
"I've never seen the ghost of one," said Uncle George, with a laugh. "Here, Phil! Take this!" and he handed me from his pocket an old flint-lock pistol, of which I knew he had a pair. "You won't need it, but it makes one feel bolder to carry it. If you see any ghosts, blaze away at them, and if you hit them we'll nail their bodies up outside to scare away the rest."
Then, still laughing, to cheer us, I think, they bade us good-bye and went off down the tunnel.
Carette was already spreading out the hay, which Uncle George and my grandfather had got through the narrow ways with difficulty. Their voices died away and we were alone, and I was so heavy that, from sitting on the hay, I rolled over on it, and was asleep before I lay flat.