And calling to his men to bring the lights, he set off, between stumbling and crawling, for the rock barrier. One of the men had the decency to stop a moment and tell Fiona that they had seen nothing of any boy; Jeconiah turned and abused him for a laggard.
With a good deal of difficulty the two men hoisted and shoved Jeconiah over the rock barrier. Once over, he took a light himself, told the men to wait where they were, and after a good look at the map set out for the recess where the Urchin had found the doubloon. Fiona followed him; there was some vague idea in her mind of protecting the Urchin's property; behind that there was still a faint subconscious hope that in some way or other the Urchin would suddenly reappear, and laugh at her terrors.
Jeconiah reached the recess. He saw and understood the marks of the boxes on the sand. He swung round on Fiona with a snarl like that of a hungry wolf.
"You think you're clever, don't you, you and your father," he said. "I suppose you've had the stuff moved. But I'll have it if I go to the middle of the earth for it."
It was the old hawker who shouted. He had stood apart, a silent spectator of the scene. And at this moment he called out, in a voice of surprising power for so frail a body:
"Look out above you. Jump."
Fiona, who had learned to obey, jumped back just in time. But Jeconiah had never learnt to obey any orders but his own. He stood, stupidly staring, as a bit of the roof of the cave bowed downward, gave way, and came cascading about him in a shower of earth and big stones, that filled the air with thick dust. When the dust cleared again, they saw Jeconiah lying on his back in the middle of the cliff fall, motionless, and to all appearance dead.
But Fiona was not looking at Jeconiah. She was looking at the place where the roof of the cave had bowed itself before falling; and into her mind came crowding dim forgotten legends, legends of fear and hope. And she was saying over and over again to herself, as though she might miss its purport, that behind the cliff fall, as if impelling and directing it, she had seen a small brown elfin hand.