Mr. Earle's face looked a little grim as he heard, and his eyes scanned the clouds overhead and the aspect of things in general.
"Look here," he said to Esther in his clear, decisive way; "I'll tell you what we must do. Leave me to see after the boys. I'll go after them in the Swan; for they ought not to be alone any distance from land, with the wind getting up and blowing off shore. But if I do that for you, you must go up to the Crag for me with a message; and if the storm breaks, or looks very like breaking, you must stop up there till it's over. I'll leave word as I pass your house where you are, so that nobody will be uneasy about you."
Esther shook a little at the thought of going alone to the Crag, but she never thought of shirking.
"What is the message?" she asked.
"It's like this," said Mr. Earle, speaking rapidly and clearly: "Mr. Trelawny and I are at a stand-still in some of our experiments for a certain chemical, which has been on order from London for some time. We think the carrier may have brought it to-day, and I'm on my way to the little shop to see if it's been left. Mr. Trelawny is waiting for me in some impatience. You must take word that I shall probably be detained, and that I want him not to go on any farther till I come back. You can remember that, can't you? You had better send Merriman to fetch him to come and see you; then you can explain all about it, and if you have once got him safe out of the laboratory, you keep him out. I don't want him to go on experimenting without me. It wants two for that sort of thing. Do you understand?"
"Yes," answered Esther, and then the pair parted. Mr. Earle went swinging down the path which passed the Hermitage and led to the village where the carrier's cart deposited parcels; and Esther, with a very grave face, went slowly upwards towards the house upon the crag.
She was glad to think she need not seek Mr. Trelawny himself amid his crucibles and retorts and strange apparatus; but she was a little afraid at having to face him all alone, although she had been trying hard to conquer her fears of him, and she had to own that he was always especially kind to her.
She could not walk very fast here, for the ground was steep, and she had tired her limbs by hurrying along the first part of the way. The air seemed very hot and close about her, and she felt the sort of ache in her head which thunder often brought.
All of a sudden she gave a little jump, and stopped short, for she saw a strange thing just in front of her—a little spiral of sulphurous smoke, curling upwards from the ground, very much as she had read that it did when volcanoes were going to have an eruption; and she very nearly forgot everything else, and turned to run away, when her steps were arrested by something even more alarming—the distinct sound of a groan, proceeding, as it seemed, from the very heart of the earth.
Esther's feet seemed rooted to the spot. She could not run away now; she had not the power. Meantime her wits were hard at work, and in a few moments she realized that she was close to the hole which the boys called the chimney of the underground cave, and the smoke she saw was coming up from that place, whilst the groan must surely have been uttered by some person down there.