“Really, Mr—a—Ingelow—I can’t consent to your running this risk,” answered the General, greatly moved. “Now, this man is accustomed to it. Therefore let him go down.”
“No risk at all, sir, I assure you. Only an easy climb. I wish it might be successful,” answered Eustace, as he threw off his jacket, and, aided by the fisher lad, let himself carefully over.
“You’ll ha’ to be quick down there, ’cause of the tide,” warned Jem Pollock, who was devoting his energies to keeping the crow-bar steady. “You can’t come up again this way, I’m thinkin’. And jes’ tell them down there to hurry a bit, for she’s a rollin’ in fast and steady.”
“All right,” cried Eustace as he made his way down. The rope was a regular climbing rope, knotted at intervals; but the depth was considerable, and before he had got halfway, the athletic young fellow began to feel that he would need all his powers. Indeed, although he had made light of any idea of risk in the matter, he now realised that there was plenty of it. The perspiration streamed from every pore, and it was all he could do at times to avoid being hurled from his dizzy position by the swaying of the rope and the consequent friction of his knuckles against the hard surface of the rock.
Although dark enough from above, yet once in the fissure, sufficient light penetrated from the outside to render all its recesses plainly visible, and as the intrepid youth made his way down deeper and deeper, the more strongly did the conviction take hold of him that he would indeed find Hubert Dorrien at the bottom, but it would be in the form of a shattered, ghastly and unrecognisable corpse. Not an encouraging or nerve-steadying reflection for one in his perilous position, but Eustace Ingelow, with his brave heart and good conscience, felt that it would take more than this to cause his nerve to fail. And now all sounds were hushed, and save for the laboured breathing of the climber and the occasional rattle of dislodged stones, falling with a hollow echo to the bottom of the abyss, the silence was almost oppressive.
“Is he safe?” whispered the anxious father to Jem Pollock, as the sound of something heavy reaching the ground was borne upward.
“Ay, sir, he is,” replied the other gravely. The stout fisherman had never ceased to reproach himself for allowing a lad like that to venture upon such an errand while he himself remained safe at the top. What would he find down there, he wondered?
And Eustace was thinking the same, as, very much exhausted, he thankfully realised that his feet were once more on solid ground. His heart beat fast and irregularly as he peered about in the dim half light, expecting every moment to meet with a horrible sight. But the cave was empty. A big crab sidled away into a dark corner, with its formidable nippers extended, menacingly, and shoals of smaller ones ran spiderlike into the little pools of water left by the tide in the rocks and sand. The green, slimy walls were hung with seaweed and studded with pointed limpets, but of anything human there was no trace.
No trace. Stay—what was that? A gleam of something caught his eye—something that lay half-buried in the sand. He picked it up, and his heart gave a great jump. It was a small and curiously-wrought silver matchbox.
A shout outside and Mr Curtis and his party joined him. In the flurry of his excitement and the exhaustion following upon his perilous and violent exertions, Eustace handed over his discovery to the vicar. The next moment he would have given anything to have kept it quietly to himself. Why, he could not for the life of him have told—one of those strange and most unerring instincts.