“But I should just like to have a peep in one or two of the packages, Cinder.”
“Yes, I know you would; but you promised not to want to meddle, or I wouldn’t have come. Now didn’t you?”
“All right,” said Mike sulkily; “but I did think you were a fellow who had more stuff in you. There, you won’t do anything adventurous.”
“Yes, I will,” cried Vince quickly: “I’ll get the lanthorn and go and explore the seal’s hole, if you’ll come.”
“And get bitten to death by the brutes. No, thankye.”
“Bitten to death! Just as if we couldn’t settle any number of seals with sticks or conger clubs!”
“Ah, well, you go and settle ’em, and call me when you’ve done.”
“No need to. You wouldn’t let me go alone. Now then, we’ll get some fish, and have a good fry.”
Vince ran to the wall, where their lines hung upon a peg; and now they noticed, for the first time, that there had been a high tide during the late storm, for the sand had been driven up in a ridge at one side of the cave mouth, but had only come in some twenty or thirty feet.
Their baits, in a box pierced with holes to let the water in and out, were quite well and lively; and putting some of these in a tray, they went cautiously out from rock to rock in the wide archway till there was deep water just beyond for quite another twenty feet; then rocks again, and beyond them the gurgling rush and hurry of the swift currents, while the pool before them, though in motion, looked smooth and still, save that a close inspection showed that the surface was marked with the lines of a gentle current, which apparently rose from below the rocks on the right.