The path down to the sands was a scramble, but not particularly difficult for agile young limbs. It led them on to a belt of rocks, where ghost-like little fishes were darting across silvery pools, and small crabs were scuttling among tangled masses of sodden, salt-scented sea-weed, and sea-anemones spread scarlet tentacles in the clear water. The wall-like, reddish-brown cliff rose almost sheer above, with gulls and puffins and guillemots and cormorants perched on its rugged crags, or rising to circle screaming in the air.
"Looks like the entrance to a cave over there!" said Morland. "Bet you six cigarettes to six chocolates I'm right!"
"You oughtn't to bet, you naughty boy!" returned Claudia. "Besides, we can't get any chocolates nowadays. We'll go and see, though, if it really is a cave. I love exploring."
To reach the place Morland had pointed out, they were obliged to struggle through jungles of brown sea-weed, and to slip down little precipices slimy with green sea-grass, and to scramble over rough projecting points of rock, honey-combed into queer shapes by the action of the tide. A jump across a crevice and a climb up a few feet of sheer precipice landed them at the entrance of the cave. Morland scrambled in front, and gave a hand to the others.
They found themselves in a large, rounded grotto, the walls of which shelved gently in a series of natural ledges; the floor was dry, and covered with fine silvery sand, and at the far end lay a pile of timber, washed in perhaps from some wreck by an abnormally high tide. The afternoon sun shone through the entrance and gleamed on little bits of mica and spar in the walls, making them glitter like diamonds.
"What an adorable place!" exclaimed Claudia with enthusiasm.
"A regular sea-nymphs' grotto!" exulted Lorraine, and Landry, who was not given to words, smiled, and pulling out a piece of timber sat down upon it.
"A good idea!" said Lorraine, following suit. "Look here, I've just had a brain wave. Let's appropriate the cave, and call it ours. Except just in the August holidays, I don't suppose anybody ever comes here, so we should have it quite to ourselves. It shall be a real sea-nymphs' grotto. We'll get shells from the shore, and make lovely patterns with them all along those ledges, and hang sea-weeds about, and make some seats with those pieces of wood, and we'll come out here on Saturdays sometimes, and bring our lunch. What votes?"
"A1! I'm your man, or rather your merman!" grinned Morland. "Any good recipe for growing a fish's tail, please? A diet of whelks and winkles not welcome, for my digestion's delicate."