"Too risky. You don't want Pierre to catch you spyin'."
Dare was not to be dissuaded, however. He was fired at the thought of catching a glimpse of the secret harbour and the activity on deck.
"I'm going, anyhow," he said, and after ascertaining that the cabin was empty he slipped out of the room, taking care to shut the door firmly behind him. He stood still in the middle of the cabin for a full minute, then cautiously mounted the ladder leading to the deck. He was facing the taffrail as his head emerged. There was no one in that part of the ship. He summoned sufficient nerve to raise his head high enough above the shutter to view the whole of the scene about him.
The ship, as Ben had surmised, was in a cave. An immense cave it was, vaulted like a cathedral. Huge splinters of rock hung like icicles from its roof, and its walls gleamed black as ebony in the light of immense flares which dotted the ship's deck and rose in tiers high up into the cave, illuminating what Dare guessed to be a rocky stair leading either to the cliff-top or to some inner chamber. Yet so intense was the blackness within the cave that the flares only lit up their immediate vicinity, and deepened the intensity of the darkness outside their bright circles.
There was grandeur in the scene, a grandeur heightened by the great volume of sound which echoed through the cave like the emanations of a gigantic pipe organ with all stops pulled full out. The noise had been immense even when heard in the seclusion of the cabin, but here on deck it was deafening.
The mind rocked under its assault and in Dare it caused a confusion which made the scene partake of the quality of a nightmare. The flitting figures of the crew, each carrying a case and sometimes two on his shoulders, had an air of unreality. Their activities seemed fantastic and their movements queerly mechanical. The cave seemed to hold itself aloof from the use to which it was being put, gloomily voicing continual rumblings which might be interpreted as threats to the invaders, but which served the smugglers as a perfect cloak for their illicit work.
So far as Dare could see there was no beach here. The water ran deep right to the cave's limits, and the ship was lying close against the rock, her side protected by immense rope fenders.
The crew were carrying the cargo up a sloping, winding staircase whose top was lost sight of in the gloom, a narrow, treacherous staircase which it seemed that only goats could safely tread, but which the smugglers mounted with facility.
Dare searched in vain for the entrance to the cave. It was hidden in the gloom, but from the shape of the immense vaulted roof he could imagine it as being little more than a hole in the face of the cliff; a cliff solid in appearance, but hollowed out by some freak of nature.
No wonder the smugglers considered their base as being perfect for their purpose. It was all that Dare had ever conceived a smugglers' cave could be, and more. It was like no smugglers' cave he had ever seen or read of. He was a little awed by it, so strong an impression did its grandeur make on his sensibility.