I felt that if I could get away from that adventure I, too, would live at home most cheerfully until the day of my death. We took advantage of the uproar to step quickly into the darkness of the passage.
Just before we came to the low stone breastwork which had given me such a shock a few minutes before, we heard some one whistling a bar of a tune. The tune was the tune of—
"Oh, my true love's listed, and wears a white cockade."
And to our horror the whistler was coming quickly towards us. In another second we saw him stepping along the gallery, swinging a lantern. He was a big, strong man, evidently familiar with the way.
"Back," said the coastguard in a gasp. "Get back, for your life, and down that staircase."
The man didn't see us; didn't even hear us. He stopped at the stone breastwork, opened his lantern, and lit his pipe at the candle, and then stepped on leisurely towards the chamber. Our right course would have been "to go for him," knock him down, knock the breath out of him, lash his wrists and ankles together, and bolt for the entrance. But the coastguard was rather upset by his adventure, and he let the minute pass by. Had he rushed at the man as soon as he appeared; but, there—it is no use talking. We didn't rush at him, we scuttled back into the chamber, and then down the worn stone steps cut out of the rock, which seemed to lead down and down into the bowels of the earth. As we hurried down, leaping lightly on the tips of our toes, the quaver of the tune came after us, so clearly that I even made a guess at the whistler's identity.
When we had run down the staircase about half-way down to sea-level we found ourselves in a cave as big as the church at Dartmouth. It was fairly light, for the entrance was large, though low, and at low water (as it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings, and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon it; due, I suppose, to the deep water of the channel. I saw all these things afterwards, at leisure; I did not notice them very clearly in that first moment. All that I saw then was a large sea-lugger, lying moored at the cavemouth, some few feet lower down. She was a beautiful model of a boat (I had seen that much in seeing her bow from the top of the cliff), but of course her three masts were unstepped, and she was rather a handful for a man and a boy. We saw her, and made a leap for her together, and both of us landed in her bows at the same instant, just as the man with the lantern, peering down from the top of the stairs, asked us what in the world we were playing at down there.
The coastguard made no answer, for he was busy in the bows; I think he had his knife through the painter in five seconds. Then he snatched up a boat-hook (I took an oar), and we drove her with all our strength along the channel into (or, I should say, towards) the open sea and freedom.
"Hey," cried the man with the lantern, "chuck that! Are you mad?" He took a step or two down the staircase, in order to see better.
"Drive her, oh, drive her, boy!" cried the coastguard.