“Hold your silly tongues,” said the Mouldiwarp crossly. “You was told not to go gossiping. Here! scratch a way out with them white paws of yours.”
It set the example, scratching at the enormous cliff with those strong, blunt, curved front feet of it. And the cats scratched too, with their white, padded gloves that had tiger claws to them. And the rock yielded—there was a white crack—wider, wider. And the swaying, swirling torches came nearer and nearer across the plain.
“In with you!” cried the Mouldiwarp; “in with you!”
“Jim!” said Lord Arden. “I’ll not go without Jim!”
“He’s half-way there already,” said the Mouldiwarp, pushing Lord Arden with its great white shoulder. “Come, I say, come!” It pushed them all into the crack of the rock, and the cliff closed firm and fast behind them, an unanswerable “No” set up in the face of their pursuers.
“This way out,” said the Mouldiwarp, pointing its dusty claw to where ahead light showed.
“Why,” said Edred, “it’s the smugglers’ cave—and there’s the clock!”
Next moment there it wasn’t, for Richard had leapt on it, and he and it had vanished together, the Mouldiwarp clinging to the hour hand at the last moment.
The white cats, which were Edred and Elfrida, drew back from the whirl of the hands that was the first step towards vanishment. They saw their father and Uncle Jim go up the steps that led to the rude wooden door whose key was like a church key—the door that led to the opening among the furze that they had never been able to find again.
When the vanishing of the clock allowed them to follow, and they regained the sunny outer air where the skylarks were singing as usual, they were just in time to see two figures going towards the castle and very near it.