At a sign from Brian, Harold got upon the ledge and helped Beatrice out of the boat.
The light of the candle that was in the bow of the boat gleamed upon the figure of a man naked from the waist up, and wearing a hard round hat with a candle fastened to the brim.
Harold knew that this was the costume of the seal-hunter of the Western caves, for he had had a talk with Brian on the subject, and had learned that only by swimming with a lighted candle on his forehead for a quarter of a mile, the hunter could reach the sealing ground at the termination of the cave.
Without a word being spoken, the boat went on, and its light soon glimmered mysteriously in the distance.
Harold and Beatrice stood side by side on the narrow ledge of rock and watched the dwindling of the light. The candle that was on the niche of rock almost beside them seemed dwindling also. It had become the merest spark. Harold saw that Brian had inadvertently placed it so that the dripping of the water from the roof sent flecks of damp upon the wick.
He stretched out his hand to shift it to another place, but before he could touch it, a large stalactite dropped upon it, and not only extinguished it, but sent it into the water with a splash.
The little cry that came from the girl as the blackness of darkness closed upon them, sounded to his ears as a reproach.
“I had not touched it,” said he. “Something dropped from the roof upon it. You don’t mind the darkness?”
“Oh, no—no,” said she, doubtfully. “But we were commanded to be dumb.”
“That command was given on the assumption that the candle would continue burning—now the conditions are changed,” said he, with a sophistry that would have done credit to a cabinet minister.