The bow of the boat touched the huge boulders which formed a bar across the mouth of the cave. Maurice leaped out, gun in hand, and stood knee deep in the water, feeling with his feet for a secure resting-place.
“Keep the boat off, Neal, and take your shot if you get a chance.”
He shouted—“Hello-lo-oh.”
The rocky sides and roof of the cave echoed back his cry a hundred times. Again he shouted, and again, until shouts and echoes meeting clashed with each other, and it seemed as if the tremendous laughter of gleeful giants mocked the solemn booming of the sea. There was a rush of many wings, and a flock of terrified rock pigeons flew from the cave. Maurice fired one barrel after another in quick succession, and two birds dropped dead into the water. Neal, shaking the girl’s hand from his arm, fired, too. From his seat in the swaying boat it was difficult to aim well. He missed once, but killed with his second shot. The boat was borne forward and bumped sharply on the boulders at the cave’s mouth. The laughter of the echo died away. Instead of it came, like angry threats, the repetition of their four shots, multiplied to a fusilade of loud explosions.
“Come back, Maurice,” cried Una. “Come back and let us get out of this. I’m frightened. I cannot bear it any longer.”
“You shall have all the four wings of my birds to trim your hats with, Brown-Eyes,” said Maurice, as he clambered dripping into the boat. “Neal will stuff his bird for you and perch him on a stone. You shall have him to set on the top of your new bureau, the one Aunt Estelle sent you when she escaped from Paris without having her head chopped off.”
They pushed the boat cautiously back along the channel, travelling stern first, for there was little room to turn, and even in calm weather men do not willingly lay a boat across the sea in such a place.
“Now for Rackle Roy and a basketful of glashins and lithe,” said Maurice.
East a little and out seawards from the mouth of the cave lies a long, flat rock, dry at low water, and even at flood tide in calm weather, swept with desolating surf when the Atlantic swell rolls in or the wind lashes the nearer sea to fury. Right out of the centre of the rock the waves have fashioned a deep bay, curved like a horse-shoe. This is a famous fishing-place. As the tide rises, lithe and glashin, brazers, gurnet, rock codling, and crowds of cuddings come here to feed, and the fisherman, on those rare days, when he can land at all, may count on bringing home with him great bunches of fish strung through the gills.
The rock lay far enough from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. The sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of the party revived when they landed. Una’s gaiety returned to her.