“Then just you wait till I’m out of sight, and then come down the way you see me go. Go long same as if you was after butterflies or the like—a bit this way and a bit that—see?” said the man. And they obeyed.
Alas! too few children in those uninteresting times of ours have ever been in a smuggler’s cave. To Edred and to Elfrida it was as great a novelty as it would be to you or to me.
When they came up with the brown man he was crouching in the middle of a patch of furze.
“Jump they outside bushes,” he said. And they jumped, and wound their way among the furze-bushes by little narrow rabbit-paths till they stood by his side.
Then he lifted a great heap of furze and bramble that looked as if it had lived and died exactly where it was. And there was a hole—with steps going down.
It was dark below, but Elfrida did not hesitate to do as she was told and to go forward. And if Edred hesitated it was only for a minute.
The children went down some half a dozen steps. Then the brown man came into the hole too, and drew the furze after him. And he lighted a lantern; there was a tallow candle in it, and it smelt very nasty indeed. But what are smells, even those of hot tallow and hot iron, compared with the splendid exploring of a smuggler’s cave? It was everything the children had ever dreamed of—and more.
There was the slow descent with the yellowness of the lantern flame casting golden lights and inky shadows on the smooth whiteness of the passage’s chalk walls. There were steps, there was a rude heavy door, fastened by a great lock and a key to open it—as big as a church key. And when the door had creaked open there was the great cave. It was so high that you could not see the roof—only darkness. Out of an opening in the chalk at the upper end a stream of water fell, slid along a smooth channel down the middle of the cave and ran along down a steep incline, rather like a small railway cutting, and disappeared under a low arch.
“‘DO YOU THINK THE FRENCH WILL LAND TO-MORROW IN LYMCHURCH BAY?’ EDRED ASKED.”