CHAPTER XXV
In Which There is a Landslide at Little Tickle Basin and Something of Great Interest and Peculiar Value is Discovered in the Cave
NOON of the next day found the three boys at Little Tickle Basin, with the punt moored to the mysterious ring. Many a vessel had floated in that snug berth before, no doubt. But whose? And what flag did they fly? When the tide was at the full, the boys set off across the basin in the punt; and they were soon ashore, with the head of the little rock in line with the point of land, as the chart directed.
"Now for it!" cried Tom.
And up the cliff he started, Jack following, with Billy Topsail, who was quite as deeply stirred as they, bringing up the rear, a pick in one hand and a shovel in the other. It was not hard climbing. The declivity could hardly be called a cliff. Rather, it was a hill, rising sharply from the water's edge—steep, strewn with broken rock, loose turf and decaying stumps, and overgrown with moss and ill-nourished shrubs. Jack was impressed with the instability of the whole mass.
"If it weren't for the juts of naked rock," he thought, with some alarm, "this stuff would all slip into the water, like snow from the roof of a house."
But he was far too deeply interested in the search to dwell upon such speculation, however threateningly the imagination might present the possibilities. They all kept to the perpendicular line, from their landing place to the crest of the hill; and they searched painstakingly, tearing aside the shrubs, peering under overhanging rocks, prying into dark holes. It was all without reward. At last, Jack came to the top of the hill. Tom was below him, following a narrow ledge; and Billy Topsail, now wearied of the search, was sitting on a boulder, lower down.
"Hello, Tom!" Jack shouted. "What luck?"
Jack caught hold of a shrub, and leaned outward, in an attempt to catch sight of Tom.
"Nothing yet," Tom answered.