As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

She was certain that Grenville attached some unusual importance to an inspection of the cave.

"Couldn't I help?" she asked him. "What was the fault of the ladder?"

"Fully six feet too short. Perhaps you'd better watch for passing steamers. If we missed one—whom should we blame?"

They had slowly returned to the shelter, where the table was attractively spread.

"What a luncheon!" said Grenville, enthusiastically. "I'll eat in a rush and be back before you know I've gone." He certainly ate with lively promise.

But, after the raft was launched on the tide, he lost all sense of time. He had left his shoes and stockings on the shore. He had brought a torch, lighted, which he lashed in an upright position on the raft. Wading and paddling, punting, pulling, and at times even pushing his craft along the beach, he warmed to his work in the briefest space, since the tide could hardly have been more favorable to his needs.

The pole he had brought had a hook at the end, bound firmly in place with copper wire. This was an excellent provision, especially when he came to the cliff, where wading was out of the question. He was thus enabled to catch at a ledge, or any open crevice, and draw his unwieldy float along, while fending it off from various rocks on which it might otherwise have pounded.

His work was hard and slow. The distance was not discouraging, however, and with some of the swirls to assist, here and there, he finally came to a broken sort of cape, from which he readily saw his dangling ladder. After that a hot bit of fighting was required to maintain his position near the wall. The tide was uneasy—a hungry, ugly swirl that alternately came and subsided.

When he passed it at last his task was done, for the cave was a stone's toss away. It was not even then to be seen, and its presence in the cliff would scarcely have been suspected. But Grenville knew the luxuriant plant that grew across a portion of its entrance. When he presently moored his raft to a rock fairly under the shadow of the weed, the cave was just above him.

Under his feet the ledge was rough and sloping. It was pitted so completely as to form a rude natural stairway to the opening under the overhanging shelf. This mouth to the cavern was hardly six feet wide and not more than four in height. Its access was comparatively easy.