“Why, Samson, what do you mean?” cried Scarlett.
“This here!”
There was a rattling sound, a clicking noise of flint upon steel, and soon after a glowing spark appeared, then a blue flame, a splint burst into a blaze, and directly after Samson’s red and shining features could be seen by the light of the candle he had lit inside a lanthorn.
“There, lads,” he said, closing the door with a snap; “you didn’t think to tell me to bring that, but I thought of it, and there we are. Now we can see what we’re about,” he continued, as he swung the lanthorn above his head; “and not much to see nayther. Only an ’ole. Yes, of course. There you are. Sheep’s bones. Dessay many a one’s tumbled down here. Hole don’t go up very high,” he added, once more raising the lanthorn above his head; “but it goes down to the sea for sartain.”
“Oh, Samson, and you’ve left the line up above. If we had it here, we might have swung the lanthorn down and seen how deep it was.”
“That’s just like you, Master Fred,” said Samson. “You always think other folk will do what you’d do. You’d ha’ left the line up at the top, same as you did your clothes, but being only a gardener, and a very bad one, as my brother Nat says, I put that there line in my pocket, and here it is.”
Fred’s answer was a slap on Samson’s hard broad back, as he tied one end of the line to the lanthorn-ring, swung it over the edge of the shelf, and they watched it go down sixty or seventy feet, feebly illumining the sides of the cave, and as it grew lower an additional radiance was displayed by the light striking on the bottom, which proved to be full of water kept slightly in motion by the influx of the waves outside.
“Not much to see, my lads,” said Samson. “No gold, nor silver, nor nothing. Shouldn’t wonder if there’s pigeons’ nesties, though, only you couldn’t get at ’em without a ladder. There! seen enough?”
“No; I want to see whether there is any way down,” said Fred.
“Any way down?” said Samson, swinging the lanthorn to and fro. “No, my lad—yes, there is. Easily get down at that corner. Slide down or slip down. See!”