Chapter Seventeen.
An Exciting Discovery—The Cove wins a Name.
The next morning, at breakfast, Walter proposed that he and Harry Higginson should, after school, go down to the neck and shoot ducks, for Clump had reported that he had seen several flying over the cape. Our salt tute was at the table, and Harry, in reply, turned to him and said—
“Captain, won’t you take my gun this afternoon and go with Walter in my place? Bob and I have a little secret service to attend to, which can’t be postponed; so will you shoot the ducks for me?”
“No, Harry,” the Captain replied, “I shall not think of shooting here, where we have the hunter of the Ottawa—the companion of Ollabearqui, the slayer of moose and panther-cats—ha! ha! Eh, Mr Clare?”
“Well, Captain Mugford, I will accept your kind offer, as I should like very much to have a few hours’ shooting with Walter. I shall try it; but a fowling-piece and birds on the wing are different things from a rifle and running game as large as those I used to practise on, and I imagine that Walter will not commend me as the Indian did,” was Mr Clare’s answer.
After the morning lessons and dinner were over, Harry and I stole off together to make an investigation of last night’s mystery. We took our way to the cove, which was soon to win a name. Although but three-quarters of a mile from our house, that part of the cape about the cove was the roughest and most inaccessible quarter in our possessions. I do not know that any of us ever climbed down to the water there before. The attractions in every other direction of fishing, bathing, shooting, and boating were so numerous that we had not carried our explorations in that direction. You may possibly remember there are places, sometimes within little more than a stone’s-throw of your house, with which you never think of making acquaintance. Just such a place was the cove. It did not invite us particularly. It was not on the route of any of our pleasure expeditions, and, as I have said, there were points of interest in every other direction. But just above the cove was a high knob-shaped piece of grass and shrubs, dotted with many slabs of sharp stones that stood up like tombstones, and made the knoll look so much like a grave yard that we used to call it “our cemetery.” There the sheep liked to feed just before night. It was a favourite spot, where they often came for their evening bite.
We crossed that, and commenced a scramble down a jagged, rocky declivity almost perpendicular. It reminded us of the cliffs in the islands of Orkney and Shetland, pictures of which, with the men suspended by ropes getting eggs from the nests that fill the crevices, have interested every boy in his geography book. With bruised hands and knees, and rather tattered trousers, we reached a ledge just above the high-tide mark. The cove was a perfect harbour. A boat there would be defended from every gale but a south-wester, and partly from that, whilst it would also be completely hidden unless from a boat right off the entrance of the cove, or unless some one peered over the dangerous cliff above; and what would one think of looking for in there? But we found enough to excite our astonishment. First there were a strand of rope and an oar on the narrow ledge, which we followed a couple of yards, and then saw an opening between two immense strata of stone. We looked in, and a ray of light that came through the fissure at the other extremity showed us a number of kegs, several bales of goods, sails, numerous coils of rope, and various other articles. We climbed in, and found also a rusty flintlock musket, standing between two barrels. If not as much frightened, we were as much astonished as Robinson Crusoe, when he discovered in the sand the print of a human foot.
As hastily as the difficulties would allow, we climbed up the rocks, and hurried towards the house, talking eagerly with each other while we ran as to what those kegs and bales might contain. Had they been hidden there by smugglers, or by whom? Were they now our property? What was to be the result?