“Fuel that burns fast,” the boatswain added. “Before we came to the end of heaps like that, of course——. But we have still got something to boil the pot with to-day. Now we must find something to put in it!”
“Let’s look about,” Frank answered.
The cliff was formed by irregular strata. It was easy to recognise the crystalline nature of these rocks, where feldspar and gneiss were mixed, an enormous mass of granite, of plutonic origin and extreme hardness.
This formation recalled in no respect to Fritz and Frank the walls of their own island from Deliverance Bay to False Hope Point, where limestone only was found, easily broken by pick or hammer. It was thus that the grotto of Rock Castle had been fashioned. Out of solid granite, any such work would have been impossible.
Fortunately there was no need to make any such attempt. A hundred yards from the bastion, behind the piles of sea-wrack, they found a number of openings in the rock. They resembled the cells of a gigantic hive, and possibly gave access to the inside of the rock.
There were indeed several cavities at the foot of this cliff.
While some provided only small recesses, others were deep and also dark, owing to the heaps of sea-weed in front of them. But it was quite likely that in the opposite part, which was less exposed to the winds from the sea, some cavern opened into which they might carry the stores from the boat.
Trying to keep as near as possible to where the boat was moored, Fritz and his companions walked towards the eastern bastion. They hoped to find this more practicable than the other, because of its elongated outline in its lower portion, and thought that they might be able to get round it. Although it stood up sheer in its upper portion, it sloped towards the middle and ended in a point by the sea.
Their anticipations were not disappointed. In the corner formed by the bastion was a cave quite easy of access. Sheltered from the easterly, northerly, and southerly winds, its position exposed it only to the winds from the west, less frequent in these regions.
The four men went inside this cave, which was light enough for them to see all over it. It was some twelve feet high, twenty feet wide, and fifty or sixty feet deep, and contained several unequal recesses forming, as it were, so many rooms set round a common hall. It had a carpet of fine sand, free from any trace of damp. Entrance to it was through a mouth which could be easily closed.