“Look back, then.”
The lad turned, and found that without noticing it he had passed a spot where a great piece of rock terminated in a sharp edge, which overlapped a portion of the wall, and as he looked in the direction from which he had come there was a wide opening, quite six feet in height, looking as if a portion of the rock had scaled off the main mass, forming an opening some three feet wide, and remained fixed. Into this the lad stepped at once, shutting out a portion of the light, and for a few moments it seemed to him that the place ended some seven or eight feet from the entrance; but as he ran his left hand along the wall for safety and guidance, he found that instead of its being solid wall upon his left, he had been touching a mere sheet of stone, which screened another opening leading back to the original direction. Upon holding tight and peering round a sharp corner Aleck found that he was gazing into black darkness; but a breath of cool, moist air and the peculiar odour told their own tale of what was beyond, and to endorse this came the soft, sighing, whispering rush of waves sweeping over pebbles far enough below.
“Now you know the way down, my lad,” said Eben.
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
“But even if you’d found it all by yourself I suppose you wouldn’t have ventured down.”
“What, into that horrible cavern?”
“’Tarn’t a horrible cavern, my lad, only a sort of a dark passage going straight down for a bit. Had enough, or will you come further?”
“I’ll come, of course,” said the lad, firmly.
“All right, then. That’s right; there’s nothing to be afraid of. You do as I do.”
It was a faint twilight now where the pair were standing, with a dark forbidding chasm just in front, and Aleck was longing for a lanthorn, which he half expected to see the smuggler produce. But instead of doing so he stepped suddenly into the darkness.