“False alarm!” said he, as he stepped again out into the transept.
But Freda had disappeared. She had followed him into the tower, and having blown out her lantern, crouched on the lowest stair until she found herself alone again. Then, waiting until Kemm’s voice, still calling to her, sounded a long way off, she relighted her candle, ran to the hole, and seeing a ladder in it, went down without delay. The underground passage into which this led her was very different from that which led from the church to the Abbey-house. As a matter of fact, the latter was of very ancient origin, having been carefully built and paved, six hundred years ago, as a private way for the Abbot between his house and the church. The passage which led from the church to the cliff, however, was an entirely modern and base imitation, dug and cut roughly out of the red clay and hard rock of which the cliffs were composed, ill-drained, ill-ventilated, almost impassable here and there through the slipping of great masses of the soft red clay. From time to time Freda, hurrying and stumbling along as best she could, now ankle-deep in sticky mud, now hurting her feet against loose stones, saw a faint gleam of moonlight above her, let in, as in the other passage, through a narrow grating, which would pass on the surface of the ground for the entrance to a drain. At last the passage widened suddenly, and she found herself in a low-roofed cave, partly natural, partly artificial, with a narrow opening, not looking straight out to sea, but towards a jutting point of the cliff.
Here Freda paused for a moment, afraid that some one might start up from one of the dark corners. But the total silence reassured her. There was a lantern hanging on the rough wall, and there was a bench on which lay some clothes. On the floor a few planks had been laid down side by side, with a worn and damp straw mat, evidently used for removing from the boots of the gang the clay collected on the way through the passage.
But the most noteworthy objects in the cave were a strong iron bar which was fixed from rock to rock across the mouth, to which a rope ladder was fastened, which hung down the surface of the cliff, and a windlass fastened firmly in the ground, by which, as Freda guessed, bales of smuggled tobacco and kegs of contraband spirit, were hauled up from the scaur below. She crept to the entrance and peeped out.
The moon was not yet fully risen, but there was light enough for the girl to make out the admirable position of this den above the water. Not only was the opening invisible from the sea, except for a little space close in shore where even small boats scarcely ventured, but it was also hidden from any one on the rocky beach below or on the cliff above by jutting points of rock; while a perpendicular slab of rock, descending sheer to the scaur beneath it, made it quite inaccessible from below except by the means the smugglers used.
After waiting a few minutes, and peering down on to the rocks below without hearing the least sound except the splash of the incoming tide, Freda resolved to descend, and take her chance of being seen. She must find out if John Thurley was there, and if any harm had come to him.
CHAPTER XXIV.
At the very first step she made on the rope ladder, Freda sustained a sudden shock which almost caused her to lose her grip of the ropes. With a wild, wailing cry, a great sea-gull flew out from a cleft in the rock a few feet from her, and almost touching her with its long grey-white wings, flew past her and circled in the air below, still keeping up its melancholy cry of alarm or warning, which was taken up by a host of its companions. Although she had heard the shrill sea-bird’s cry before, it had never sounded so lugubrious as now. The beating of the advancing tide on the rocks below made a mournful accompaniment to the bird’s wailing; and Freda, startled and alarmed, clung tremblingly to the ladder, not daring to descend a single step, as she felt the rush of air fanned by their long wings, and dreaded lest the great birds should attack her. At last, one by one, they circled lower and lower, until they reached the sea, and, folding their wings, settled in a flock upon the water: not till then did the girl venture to proceed on her journey.
This descent, though long, was much less difficult than her first trial of a rope-ladder in the secret-room of the Abbey; for the ladder was firmly fixed to a rock below into which two iron hooks had been driven. The greatest danger she had to contend with during the descent was the extreme cold, which benumbed her fingers, and made it scarcely possible for her to grasp the ropes, and to hold her crutch at the same time; the lantern she had extinguished and tied round her waist. At last her feet touched the solid rock: she drew a long breath of relief: she had reached the scaur. Turning slowly, she took a survey of the spot.
The cliff frowned at an immense height above her, rugged, and steep as a wall. She was standing on a narrow ledge formed of broken bits of rock which had, from time to time, been detached from the main cliff by force of water and rough weather. Only a few feet away the sea was breaking into little foaming cascades against the boulders. At sea, just out of the silver light cast by the moon, and some distance away from shore, she could dimly see a boat, which she guessed to be her father’s yacht. On the right hand, a jutting point of cliff shut out the view; on the left a bend in the cliff formed a tiny bay, beyond which a sort of rough pier of black rocks stretched out into the sea.