I found my friend in the barn. The light of a candle stuck against the wall fell on the sun-browned faces of the farmhands, who watched him as he overhauled the equipment for our expedition. The various details were displayed on the lid of a big wooden chest that had once held the tin-ore between “ticketing” days at Wheal Margy. There lay some dozen torches, consisting of small branches of elm, about three feet in length, with pieces of white rag wound round one end and secured by bits of string; three small bottles containing oil, a rather heavy hammer with a new haft about three and a half feet long, a powerful gaff, a long-bladed knife, a revolver and cartridges. Near a big coil of rope was a sack of very bulky appearance, which somewhat excited my curiosity. Undoing the string round the neck of it, my friend drew out a rope-ladder ten inches in width and between fifty and sixty feet long. The rungs were of iron, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and perhaps fourteen inches apart. The strength of the ladder had previously been tried by the tug-of-war test, but now my host carefully examined the rope where it passed through eyes in the rungs, to make sure that it had not been weakened by friction or by rust. No defects being found, the free ends of the ropes were tied together, forming a triangle with the top rung; and the ladder was again stowed away in the sack. The big coil of rope was next overhauled. It was knotted at intervals of about three feet.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“We keep that up in the adit, in case anything goes wrong with the ladder.”
“And the knots?”
“They make swarming up easier.”
A vague idea of the mode of approach and of egress from the cave began to dawn upon me. “There’s only one way out?” I inquired.
“By the adit is the only way, unless you swim for it before the tide covers the mouth of the cave.”
“There’s some ledge out of reach of the tide, where you can wait till it falls?”
“No, there’s scarcely foothold for a shag or a cliff-owl on the walls of the big cave.”
I confess to feeling slightly unnerved at the prospect, the perilous character of which was now evident. However, I meant going through with the business, which was of my own inviting; but though I had the utmost confidence in my friend, it seemed to me it would be safer, in the event of accidents, that three rather than two should descend into the “big cave,” as he had called it. It is trying enough to a novice to be let down over a cliff in broad daylight to reach a peregrine’s or raven’s nest, but I could see that was nothing in comparison with the night expedition before me. In the circumstances, it is natural that the idea of sending for the Earthstopper should have occurred to me. Not only was he accustomed to the cliffs at night, but he was of firm nerve and of ready resource. I lost no time in suggesting it; already I feared it was too late.