My arm gave me little pain. Aunt Jeanne's simples had taken the fire out of the wound, and kept the muscles of an even temper. And whenever the bandages got dry and stiff Carette soaked them in fresh water and tied me up again, and seemed to like the doing of it.
Mindful of Uncle George's saying that the water-cave held light at times, we visited it again, and yet again, until coming down the sloping path one time, we saw the narrow roof above us and the rough walls on either side tinged with a faint soft light, and hastening down like children into a forbidden room, we found ourselves in a curious place.
The tide was very far out, and the black cave, in which we had hitherto seen only sulky waves tumbling unhappily, had become a wonder equal to those Krok used to open to us in the Gouliots.
We could now go quite a long way down the shelving side of the rock, and the water that lay below was no longer black but a beautiful living green, from the light which stole up through it by means of an archway at the farther end. The arch was under water, but the light streamed through it, soft and mellow and glowing, so that the whole place seemed to throb with gentle life. Outside I judged it was early morning, with the sun shining full on the sea above the archway.
And here we found what Krok had shown us in the Gouliots as their chiefest beauties,—the roof and walls were studded with anemones of every size and colour, green and crimson, and brown and pink, and lavender and white and orange; so completely was the rock clothed with them that it was not rock we saw, but masses and sheets and banks of the lovely clinging things, all closed up within themselves till the water should return, and shining like polished gems in the ghostly green light.
The boulders that strewed the sloping sides of the cave-floor were covered with them also, and in the glowing green water they were all in full bloom and waving their arms merrily to and fro in search of food.
There, too, a leprous thing with treacherous, gliding arms crawled after prey, and at sight of it Carette gripped my arm and murmured "Pieuvre," as though she feared it might hear her. She had always a very great horror of those creatures, though in speaking of them when they were not present she had at times assumed a boldness which she did not really feel. This, however, was a very small monster, and indeed they do not grow to any very great size with us.
This softly glowing place was very pleasant to us after the darkness and lantern light of the other cave. We sat for a long time, till the glow faded somewhat and the water began whuffling against the rock walls, and climbed them slowly till at last all the cave was dark again, and we groped back along the cleft to our sleeping-place with the sounds of great waters in our ears from the Boutiques.
After that we sought the sea-cave each time we woke, and whenever the light was in it we sat there, and ate, and talked of all we had done, and thought, and feared, and hoped, during those long months when we were apart. And once and again Carette fell on earlier times still, and we were boy and girl together under the Autelets and Tintageu, or swimming in Havre Gosselin, and trembling through the Gouliot caves behind Krok's tapping stick. And we talked of Aunt Jeanne's party, and our Riding Day, and Black Boy, and Gray Robin. And she told me much of the Miss Maugers, and their school, and her school-fellows. And at times she fell silent, and I knew she had sudden thought of her brother Helier. But, you see, she had so long thought of him as dead, that the fact that he had died later than she had supposed had not the power to cloud her greatly. And perhaps the fact that we were together, and going to part no more, was not without its effect on her spirits.
And I told her more fully than I had done of all that had happened to me on Herm, and on the French ship in the West Indies, and at Amperdoo, and of our escape into France in the preventive officers' boat, and of that last desperate pull across from Surtainville.