"The mistress wants a new coat, so 'twould come handy, and I wish 'ee luck. I've heerd tell that the critters sometimes hide in the cave yonder, though as no man, 's far 's I know, ever did see 'em there, it may be only guesswork."
The cave mentioned was at the head of St. Cuby's Cove. Its entrance was exposed only at low tide, and Dick had more than once visited it at such times, exploring its recesses by the light of a torch or one of the house lanterns. He had never made any interesting discovery there, and had for some years ceased to visit it.
"Didn't you tell me once that there is an entrance to the cave from the land side, Reuben?" he asked.
"Ay, folks used to say so when I was a boy, but I don't know as there be any truth in it. Once upon a time, long afore my day, there was a mine thereabouts, and maybe one of the adits ran down to the cave; but 'tis sixty year or more since the mine give out—in yer grandfer's time—and not a soul have been down in the workings ever since, 's far 's I know."
Here Sam appeared and announced that he was ready. The two lads, provided with a gun, a cutlass, a lantern, and a few candle-ends, proceeded to the spot on the beach of Trevanion Bay where their boat was moored, launched her, and rowed round the promontory to St. Cuby's Cove. The tide was running out, and as the interval during which the cave was free from water was very short, Dick and his companion worked the boat through the entrance with their hands as soon as there was room for them to pass between the roof and the surface of the sea.
The opening was at first a narrow tunnel in the cliff, but after some yards it began to widen gradually, and at length enlarged itself into a spacious vault, in which there was a continuous murmur, such as is heard on putting a shell to one's ear. By the time the boys reached it the tide had completely left the cave, and the boat stranded on a sandy beach, littered with rocks of all shapes and sizes, which had apparently fallen at various times from the roof. They lit their lantern, whose yellow rays fell on jagged granite walls, glistening shells, and slimy seaweed covering the rocks on the floor. Here and there were small pools which the tide never left dry, and where the light of the lantern revealed innumerable little marine creatures darting this way and that with extraordinary rapidity.
The boys made the boat fast by looping the painter round a jagged boulder. They moved warily, for the seal was a beast unknown to either of them, though Dick, in his total ignorance of these creatures of the deep, hardly expected to find them in the cave now that the sea had receded. Presently, however, they heard above the hollow murmur another sound, like the feeble bleat of a very young lamb. They peered about, moving the lantern to and fro, and at length discovered, lying on a rocky ledge at the inmost end of the cave, two small cream-coloured objects, scarcely more than a foot long, whose soft eyes blinked in the light, and from whose mouths issued plaintive cries of alarm.
"Bean't they proper little mites!" said Sam, putting out his hand to touch them.
"Don't do that!" cried Dick hastily; "the old ones may be about, and if they're like other beasts, they'll attack us if they think we'll hurt their young."
"Shan't we take 'em, then?" asked Sam.