"Is there much to see when you get there?" asked Jack.
"That depends upon what interests one," was the answer. "I don't know that it would please you ladies to clamber down black slippery rocks to view an empty shrine, and perhaps to be sprinkled with sea-spray, but there are guides, and in lieu of any other, I should be glad to show you the way."
After some consulting, the girls decided to give up a visit to the Dragon Cave. "For," said Nan, "after all Enoshima had so much that is beautiful to offer us that we shall be satisfied without anything further." After receiving their thanks the stranger passed on, and then Jack declared that she would like to climb up to the top of the ridge if any one would go with her. She would like to see the view even if she did not care specially about the temples. Her sisters declared that they would like to go, too, so leaving their elders sitting on the stones below, they began the climb.
"It reminds me of Amalfi," said Nan, "with the blue bay below and the winding way up the cliffs. Instead of Vesuvius we have Fujiyama, and instead of the old monastery we have Buddhist temples."
"If the colonel were here he would tell us many tales of Enoshima," said Jean.
"And Mr. Harding could tell just as many," remarked Jack who was beginning to miss the company of entertaining young men. "Don't let us stop to prowl around here very long; I think it is nicer down in the village. I bought a lot of things but I didn't spend any money to speak of and I am sorry I didn't get more. There was such a darling cunning little fox there that I think I will get when I go back, if I can find the shop where I saw it."
The view was indeed beautiful, with the silver sea below, the quaint little village, the golden sands, and, lifting its lovely crown to the clouds, Fujisan in the distance. Nan would again have tarried long, but a desire for the tiny fox once having taken possession of Jack nothing would do but she must get it as soon as possible. So down the ridge they went to rejoin Mrs. and Miss Corner and to go back under one tori-i after another to the town where the shops proved scarcely less fascinating than at first sight.
But at last even Jack confessed to being tired and so they walked back past the sand-dunes to where the little uncertain bridge led across to the mainland, and before long they were back in Kamakura and presently reached the inn whose lower front stood hospitably open to them.
"I almost wish we had gone to the cave of the Dragon when we were so nearly there," said Nan as she looked off toward the dimpling waters. "I shall never have another chance."
"But it promised to be a treacherous and unpleasant way down those slippery steps and in that dark and wet cavern," returned Mary Lee. "One of us might have fallen or something uncanny might have happened. I am rather glad we didn't go."