Cutlass and Cudgel

by George Manville Fenn

“Why, I’m not shut up!” he cried joyously. “I’m out on the ledge. They must have laid me here to be fetched off by the boat. Suppose the tide had risen while I was asleep!”

But the joyous feeling went off as he stared about him. It had been dark enough in a dense fog, but it did not feel dark and cold now, as if there was a dense fog. Everything seemed dry, and though he listened attentively, he could not hear the washing of the waves among the rocks, nor smell the cool, moist, sea-weedy odour of the coast. Instead of that a most unmistakable smell of brandy came into his nostrils.

And yet he seemed to be standing on that ledge close down to the water, for as he stooped down now he could trace with his hand one of the huge, curled-up shell-fish turned to the stone in which it was embedded, while, as he felt about, there was another and another larger still.

He listened again.

No; he was not on the seashore. He must be in the vault beneath Sir Risdon’s house, and though he had not noticed it, the floor must be paved with a layer of stones similar to those found where the little kegs had been left.

He went cautiously on with outstretched hands through the intense darkness, and his feet traced the flat curls of stone again and again, but he did not find any wall, and now, as he made up his mind to go back to where he had been when he first awoke, he found that he had not the faintest idea as to which direction he ought to take.

As he grew more able to move and act, the sense of confusion which suddenly arrested him was terrible—almost maddening.

Where was he? What was here on all sides? It could not be the cellar, as he went in one direction or the other toward the walls, and he stood at last resting, in the most utter bewilderment of mind and helplessness of body possible to conceive, while a curious feeling of awe began to steal over him.

The smugglers had not dared to kill him or throw him into the sea, as he had heard of them doing on more than one occasion, but as far as he could make out they had cast him down into some terrible place to die.

The idea was terrible, and unable to contain himself he took a step or two in one direction, then in another, and stopped short, not daring to stir for fear some awful chasm such as he had seen among the rocks should be yawning at his feet, and he should fall headlong down.