We all leaped out, and the little anchor was thrown ashore to keep the boat safe while we went away.
“For neither of you will care to be boat-keeper,” said my father smiling.
“What are you going to do?” I asked as we walked up together.
“Don’t ask questions, my boy,” he replied quietly. “If I tell you, of course you cannot, without seeming mysterious, refuse to tell your companions, and I do not care to say much at present. It does not matter, but I prefer not to talk.”
We walked up straight to the caves, which were very beautiful, covered as their mouths were with ivy and ferns, while over each a perfect sheet of dripping rain fell like a screen and threatened to soak anyone who attempted to enter.
We did not attempt it, for my father led us away to the west, and soon after, hammer in hand, he was examining the cliff-face and the various blocks of stone that had fallen down in days gone by.
We walked on for a time, but it soon became too monotonous, and we took to something to amuse ourselves, to my father’s great satisfaction, for he evidently now preferred to be alone.
We did not watch him, but to me it seemed evident enough that he was searching for minerals, of which he believed that he had seen some trace.
As for us, we rather enjoyed our ramble, for this was a part of the shore that we had not explored for some time, and the number of pools and hollows among the stones were almost countless, while at every turn we had to lament the absence of our baskets and nets.
Sometimes we climbed on to some difficult-looking pile, at other times we crept in under the cavernous-looking places, where, at high tide, the sea rushed and roared. Wearying of this, we explored the edge where high-water left its marks, to examine the curious shells washed up, and the varieties of sea-weed driven right under the perpendicular wall of rock, that towered up above us fully two hundred feet before it began to slope upwards as a hill.