In the twelve years of his existence, Roger had never seen anything like this and surprise rendered him inarticulate.
"Some cave!" he commented at length. "Look, Mr. Max, what are these?"
"Oh, haven't you met any sea-anemones? The pools are full of them.
Jolly little beggars."
Roger was naturally less enthusiastic over the charming water-gardens than the girls when they chanced upon them, but he was considerably interested in the numerous and varicolored snails, their shells bright green or delicate pink, truly entrancing to pick up and examine. By the time Roger finished a somewhat minute inspection his companion was out of sight.
"Hello!" he shouted in some concern.
"Right-oh!" came a quiet reply.
Bather abashed by the startling echoes he had evoked, Roger climbed over fallen rocks to the back of the cave. There the floor rose sharply, affording a level apparently beyond reach of the tide, for some tiny land plants had found a lodging, ferns waved from the crannied vault and there was no sign of any marine growth.
"This used to be a favorite resort of mine," said Max, who was sitting on the high ledge, some five feet wide. Beyond, the cave ended in a mass of stone and rubble.
Roger's eyes grew wide. "What a dandy place!" he exclaimed.
"Not much compared with the Plémont caves," replied his companion. "You'll probably go there before leaving the island. There are five or six of them and one has a waterfall dividing it into two distinct caves. Plémont is the spot where the cable comes in from England, crawls out of the ocean like a great dripping hoary old sea-serpent to trail through a cleft to the station on the cliff above. This is a rat-hole beside those caves."