The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

'Let us get in nearer to the land,' said the Dominie; ''tis the sole chance that remains to us.'

So seizing each of us an oar, the sea being perfectly calm and a full tide lapsing as smoothly upon the cliffs as the water in a tub wherein good wives wash their duds, we risked the matter and rowed in closer to the rock. We sought if by good chance there might be found some inlet where we could land, or some cave which might conceal us from the cruel men who were seeking our lives.

Nor was our adventuring in vain, for as we cautiously advanced into the blackness, the wall of the cliff seemed to retire before us, so that the prow of the boat actually appeared to push it steadily back. A denser darkness, a very night of Egypt, surrounded us. Gradually the noise of the pursuers dulled, sank, and died away. We lost sight of the grey, uneasy plain of the sea behind us, and continued to advance through a long water passage walled with rock, the sides of which we could sometimes feel with our hands and sometimes fail to touch with our oars. This I took at the time to be a marvellous dispensation of Providence on our behalf, as without doubt it was. But now we know that all that shoreward country, owing to the abundance of soft stone by the seaside, is honeycombed with caves, so that it was well-nigh impossible to miss at least one of these in every half mile of cliff all about the Heads of Benerard. Yet that we should strike this one of all others appeared a thing worthy of admiration, as presently you shall hear, and showed the same dispensing and favourable Providence which has throughout been on the side of Culzean and against our enemies of Bargany.

Marjorie and Nell still sat together in the stern, but so dense was the dark that we could see nothing of them. The Dominie and I took our oars from the rullocks and pushed onward into the cave, hoping to come in time to some wider space, where we could either disembark or find a passage out upon the land above us.

And so presently we came to a place wonderful enough in itself, yet no more than the gateway to other and greater marvels.

The waves which had scarcely been visible out on the open sea ran into the cave at regular intervals, and in the narrow places formed themselves into a considerable swell of water. Before us we could hear them break with a noise like thunder upon some hidden strand or beach. This somewhat terrified us in that place of horrid darkness, for the noise was loud as is a waterfall in the time of spate, the echoing of the cave and the many contracted passages and wide halls deceiving the ear.

So our boat, being poised upon the crest of one of these smooth steeps of water which rolled onward into the cave, advanced swiftly into a more spacious cavern, where the oar could be used without touching the rock at either side. The sounds now came back to us also from high aloft, and we had the feeling of much air and a certain spacious vastness above us. Yet the imprisoning darkness, confused with the lashing of the waves, wrought a kind of invincible melancholy which weighed down all our spirits.

Presently, however, the prow of the boat took the slushy sand in a coign more retired, where the waves did not, as in other places, fall with an arching dash, but rather lapsed with a gentler wash as upon a regular beach. Being in the bow, I lost no time in leaping ashore, and in a few moments I had the boat fast to a natural pier of rock, behind which the water was quiet as in a mill pond.

Here in the darkness we helped each other out, and feeling ourselves now somewhat more safe from our enemies, we shook one another by the hand and made many congratulation on our escape, which had indeed been marvellous.

Even thus we waited for the day to reveal to us whether there were any passage by which we could ascend from the deeps of the Cimmerian pit wherein we were enclosed, without adventuring out again in our boat upon the water, where our enemies watched for us.