Ransey Tansey’s greatest grief was in thinking about his father. It would be quite a long time yet before the tide ebbed sufficiently to permit them to leave the cave and scramble along the beach to the top of the cove. Well, there was nothing for it but to wait. But this waiting had a curious ending.
They had returned to the stalactite cave, and Ransey had once more lit his lamp, when suddenly, far at the other end, they heard something that made poor Nelda quake with fear and cling to her brother’s arm.
“Oh, it is a ghost!” she cried—“an old woman’s ghost!”
I cannot otherwise describe the sound than as a weary kind of half sigh, half moan, on a loud falsetto key.
No wonder Nelda thought it emanated from some old lady’s ghost; though what an old lady’s ghost could possibly be doing down here, it would have been difficult indeed to guess.
Bob took another view of the matter. He barked loudly and lustily, and rushed forward. It was no angry bark, however.
Next minute he came running back, and when Ransey Tansey turned the light on him he could see by the commotion among the long, rough hair which covered his rump that the fag-end of a tail he possessed was being violently but joyfully agitated.
“Come on,” he seemed to say; “follow me. You will be surprised!”
Without fear now, the children followed the dog, and, lo! not far off, standing solemnly in a kind of crystalline pulpit, was the Admiral himself. No wonder they were all astonished, or that the bird himself seemed pleased. But off the crane hopped now, the dog and the children too following, and there, not thirty yards from the place where they had been all night, was a landward opening into the cave.
It was surrounded with bush, and how the Admiral had found it must ever remain a mystery.