Pierre had barely time to obey, when there came a tremendous crash, and the boys found themselves floundering amid a welter of foam, nets, sand, dead fish, and broken timbers, in a deep dark hollow that looked like the mouth of a cave.
"There goes father's boat," sputtered Pierre, as soon as he could clear his mouth of the salt-water.
"And there go our fish," added Jack. "Here's that loaf that we put in the locker, though; and even wet bread's better than none, in a place like this. Now, then, let's be getting higher up, for the tide will be upon us here in no time."
But to get higher up was no easy matter. They were in utter darkness, and (as they had already found by groping about) on the brink of a chasm of unknown depth. The ledge upon which they had been cast was evidently very narrow, and almost as slippery as ice; and Jack, being encumbered with the loaf, and Pierre badly bruised against the rocks, they were not in the best condition for climbing.
But the roar of the next wave as it came bursting in, splashing them from head to foot where they sat, was a wonderful quickener to their movements, and away they scrambled through the pitchy blackness, clinging like limpets to the rough side of the cavern as they felt their feet slide upon the treacherous rocks, and thought of the unseen gulf below.
Onward, onward still, deeper and deeper into the heart of the cold, silent rock, fearing at every moment to feel their way barred by a solid wall, and find themselves cut off from escape, and doomed to be drowned by inches. But, no; the strange tunnel went on and on as if it would never end, their only consolation being that they were unmistakably tending upward, and already (as they calculated) beyond the reach of the flood-tide.
Suddenly Jack uttered a shout of joy:
"Hurrah, Pierre! here's one of the lantern candles in my inner pocket, and I know I've got my matches somewhere. We'll be able to see where we are at last, my boy!"
The matches (luckily still dry) were produced, the candle was lighted, and our heroes took a survey of their surroundings.
They were in a long narrow passage, rising to a considerable height overhead, and with another ledge on its opposite side, steeper and more broken than the one on which they were. In the centre lay the chasm already mentioned; but instead of the frightful depth which they had imagined, it was only six or seven feet deep at the most, and more than half full of water.