Wheeling about the rocks away up, where in the breeding season they had their nests, they seemed to resent the approach of the boat. On a ledge of rock near the cove mouth something dark moved swiftly and then splashed into the sea and was free.
It was a seal.
"I'll take you into the cave to have a look at it," cried Mr. Giveen, raising his voice to outshout the cormorants. "You needn't be a bit afraid. The devil's not here to-day—it's too fine weather for him."
"Don't go far in," cried Miss Grimshaw, and as she spoke the words the boat, urged by the rower, passed into the gloom beneath the archway.
She saw the bottle-green water of the rising and falling swell washing the pillars and the walls from which the seaweed hung in fathom-long ribbons; then they were in almost darkness, and as Mr. Giveen rested on his oars, she could hear the water slobbering against the walls, and from far away in the gloom, every now and then, a bursting sound as the swell filled some hole or shaft and was spat out again.
After a moment or two, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, the vast size of the place became apparent. Far greater than the inside of a cathedral, given over to darkness and the sea, the Devil's Kitchen was certainly a place to make one pause.
In the storms of winter, when, like the great mouth of some giant fighting the waves, it roared and stormed and spat out volumes of water, filled now almost to its roof, now blowing the sea out in showers of spray, the horror of it would be for a bold imagination to conceive.
Even to-day, in its best mood, it was not a place to linger in.
"Now I've brought you in," said Mr. Giveen, his voice finding echoes in the darkness, "and what will you give me to bring you out?"
"Nothing. Turn the boat. I don't like the place. Turn the boat, I say!"