We stood at the edge of the water, surveying the cave by the light of our torches. We saw that there depended from its roof certain shining things like icicles, of rugged form and differing in length, which I have since learned are called stalactites; and, moreover, there were large boulders and masses of broken stalactites standing up out of the water. Billy gave a shout when he saw this, and cried that he would skip from rock to rock until he came to the mouth of the cave, and defied me to race him; but the torch I was carrying was now burning low, and I stayed to kindle another before going farther; and, moreover, I doubted the wisdom of such feats of agility, for it would be easy to miss one's footing and fall into the water, and if we both did it our torches would be wetted and we should not be able to light ourselves home. I had, indeed, just called out to him to come back, when a dreadful shriek ran through the cavern, and raising my torch above my head, I saw Billy scrambling up a tall and rugged rock that stood ten feet or more above the water, a good way from where I stood. He had dropped his torch, and I saw him but dimly by the light of mine, and could not discern any cause for his terror; but that there must be a very great cause I knew well, for Billy was brave enough. He continued to shriek and call, though his voice rang so in that hollow vaulted space that I could not at first make out any words; but having started to approach him when I heard his first cry, going from rock to rock as quickly as I could, I was presently able to see a number of long tentacles clinging to the rock on which he was perched, and others waving horribly above the surface of the water, as if some blind creature were groping for its prey. And even as there came to my mind the recollection of that loathly monster from whom I myself had barely escaped, and I stood as if fascinated by those hideous antic limbs, I saw the vast bulk of the beast appear above the surface, and rise gradually behind its tentacles up the rock.
Billy was by this time perched on the very summit of the rock, and when he saw the monster ascending towards him he let forth another dreadful cry which roused me from the sort of trance into which I had fallen. Grasping the torch with my left hand and my axe with my right, I leapt over the low rocks that stood between me and Billy, scarcely keeping my footing, and began to hack with all my strength at the shapeless mass, which made such a resistance to that poor clumsy axehead as a thing of leather might make. It did not appear that my strokes were of any avail, for the tentacles crept higher and higher; and looking up when I heard another scream from Billy, I saw that one of them was beginning to twine itself about his leg. And then all of a sudden, while I was bringing my axe down once more on the monster, Billy made a leap upwards, to catch at a stalactite that depended from the roof of the vault, not far from his head. He must have been pretty near beside himself to do what he did, for if he had caught hold of it he could not have held on long; and what did in fact happen was that the stalactite broke off with a sharp snap, and down came Billy and it into the water. I thought this might be the best thing that could happen, for he could swim like a fish, and the monster would take some time in letting itself down from the rock; but when Billy rose to the surface, and I called to him, I saw by his feeble movements that he must have been hurt, so I sprang to a low rock near which he had come up, and held out my axe for him to grasp, which he did, and so I got him on to the rock, though not without some trouble, it being scarce broad enough for both of us. And immediately afterwards I observed that the monster had left the big rock and disappeared into the water, on which I cried to Billy to be of good cheer, because I was sure my continual chopping had wrought some damage on the monster and maybe killed it. But the words were scarce out of my mouth when we saw, by the ruddy light of my torch, a tentacle appear above the water not three feet away. This put me in a shudder lest we were in a perfect den of the creatures, and I called to Billy to jump across the rocks, if he could, back to the entrance to the tunnel, so that he at any rate, being now the weaker, might be out of harm's way. His terror lending him strength, he gathered himself together and leapt from rock to rock as he had done before, while I seized upon the axe which I had dropped beside me when I landed on the rock, and chopped away in a kind of frenzy at the tentacles which were brandishing themselves, you may say, at several places around me. As soon as I saw that Billy was safe I gave up the contest and sprang after him, and I was never so thankful in my life as I was when I stood beside him at the end of the tunnel.
We were neither of us in any mind to linger there, lest the monster and his brood came to attack us, for we were now so terrified that we would have believed them capable of anything. This was the second time that we had been baulked of finding an outlet to the sea, and our experience had been such that we should scarce attempt it again. We hurried back through the tunnel, and had not gone very far when we had another alarm, for whereas it had been dry when we descended, there was now a little stream of water running down, which increased as we advanced until it became almost a rivulet. At first I thought that the plug had come out of the pipe leading from the lake into the shaft, but when we came to the junction of the two passages, we saw that the water, which was now above our ankles, was pouring out of the right-hand passage, and not from the one that led from the cavern. This eased our alarm, but we did not stay to consider of any attempt to discover the ultimate source of this little torrent, but hastened on until we were once more in our hut; and then we knew by the mighty pattering on the roof and all around that a very heavy rain was falling. Indeed, when we opened the door we saw that it must have been raining ever since we departed, for the ground was exceeding sodden, and the trench about the hut was half full of water, being scarce deep enough to carry off the drainage. Of course the rain had put out the fire which we kept constantly smouldering in the grate a few feet from our door, and though a hot meal would have been very comforting after our fright and the wetting we had got, we could not make one ready, because we had no dry wood in the hut, nor indeed did we care to light a fire in it, having no chimney to let out the smoke.
A Mystery Solved
It continued raining for two or three days, greatly to our discomfort; and we made up our minds to two things: first, to have a stock of firewood ready dried; second, to build ourselves a better grate, which we could cover in with pottery ware, and thus prevent the fire from being ever extinguished. During these days we observed, as we had done before, that the lake did not rise above the high-water mark, though the rain was the heaviest since we had been on the island; and when I sought once more to account for this, and remembered the torrent pouring down the passage, it came all of a sudden into my mind that I had the true reason of it. The passage, as I have said, rose continually from the cave inwards. Well, I guessed that its upper end opened into the side of the lake, but it then rose until its highest point was pretty nearly on a level with what we called the high-water mark, and after that descended again. If it was so, it acted as a siphon, the water not flowing down the passage until the lake rose to the same height as the highest part of the passage. When I tried to explain this to Billy he said it was all gammon, because if there was an opening from the lake into the passage the water would keep on flowing through until it couldn't help but run over. He could not in the least understand that water could never rise above its own level until I showed him by means of two tanks made of pottery, one large and the other small, and then he owned that I might be right, though he said it seemed to him like saying that a ten-pound weight wouldn't send up a five-pound weight if they were put in the opposite pans of a balance.
However, my discovery (supposing my reasoning was correct, and we could not prove it)—my discovery, I say, was of no practical advantage to us, indeed, rather the reverse, for it seemed to show that the tunnel from the cavern to the sea might be sometimes impassable, so that as a way of retreat from our hut it was doubly useless. When I pointed this out to Billy he said, "Never mind, master. We shall only have to fight all the harder inside, that's all," which shows how hopeful he always was. The only comfort I had was to think that our fears and anxieties might never be justified, and that Hoggett and his crew would never more visit us.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
OF THE ASSAULT ON THE HUT, IN WHICH BOWS AND ARROWS PROVE SUPERIOR TO MUSKETS
The period of rainy weather which we suffered set me on to think again of that project of digging a moat which we had formerly abandoned. Several considerable rivulets flowed into the lake from the high ground around, of which one, that came down the slope nearest the red rock, had a pretty long course, and by the time it fell into the lake, forty or fifty yards from the hut, was almost a river. Observing how it washed the soil along with it, it came into my head that we might perchance enlist it in our service, and make it do a great part of the work of widening and deepening the trench. Of course Billy must ask his customary question, "What's the good?" following this up with another, more pertinent. "How can we, master? The river—if you call it a river: I don't—don't run anywhere near the trench."