In the morning we had left a pool of clear, shining blue, still as a Thames backwater, and the tall ship resting motionless on its pliant bosom. Every spar and rope had been distinctly outlined and reflected on the gleaming surface, which mirrored the very lines of the cutwater. Now, instead of the soft glitter of the lake laving the foot of the climbing glacier, an empty round of bleak and ice-worn rock confronted us, standing out hard and barren in the red glow of the sunset.
With a yell we raced over the flats of smooth stone to gaze into the hollow shadows where the morning shine of the pool had been. With wide-eyed wonder we gazed down the sloping bank. An extraordinary sight was there displayed.
A huge crack ran across the empty basin of the lake, seaming the granite at its deepest part for a space of about fifty yards. Wedged in the grip of it was the old Racoon, half supported by the nip of the rock, half leaning on the little launch which lay beside her, buttressing her with its funnel and bulwarks. Higher up the slope from us one of her great anchors was caught in a crevice of the rocks, and a hawser was rove from a pulley on the shank of it to the bows of the ship. A group of the crew was hauling at this with chorused shoutings, while astern a like arrangement had been tautened out.
The ship was trembling and wobbling as the thrills of the hawser shook her bows, and the granite edges scored and frayed her timbers as she wrestled in the mouth of the cleft. In another group farther off, the ladies stood upon the still dripping stones to watch the operations, keeping cautiously their distance, in case the ship should lurch over before the ropes had her fast. The bellowings of Waller and the boatswain echoed thunderously across the amphitheatre of stone as they urged the men to renewed efforts.
The unexpected wonder of this sight held us silent for a score of seconds; then Gerry gave expression to the sentiments of the company at large.
“Well, I am damned,” quoth he emphatically.
“I wish the lake had been,” I answered ruefully. “There goes the last of the Racoon. If she topples over we’re done for.”
“But look here,” went on Gerry, gazing at the empty basin with an air of stupefied surprise, “the pool’s fallen below the level of the sea outside. How in the name of wonder do you account for that?”
Lessaution found his voice. “It is one of the many wonders of the volcanic actions which we discover so plentifully in this country. The water withdraws itself—is sucked, if you will—into the bowels of the earth. Perhaps it will rise again. Who knows?”
“In that case,” said I, “we shall live in perpetual dread of sudden drowning, if she’s roped down to the bed of the lake like that. We shall have to buttress her up some other fashion. We must build supports of stone beneath her; then if she should suddenly be floated again she won’t be swamped. But we’d better get down and hear the news.”
The slope below us was short and steep. Lessaution looked down it cautiously. He removed the shot-gun which swung from his back, seated himself upon his cartridge-bag, and splayed out his legs before him. Having thus ingeniously converted himself into a human sledge, he pushed off, and in a moment was flying down the damp, smooth rocks, arriving within a hundred yards of the ship with safety and despatch, and greeted by the ladies with a shrill cheer.
It was undignified, no doubt, but an eminently practical device. We were by no means slow to follow his example, and straddling upon the shining slope, fled down after him with much the effect of luggage being transferred to the Dover boat, and reached the bottom with swiftness and without mishap.
The ladies met us with effusion. Since our departure, they seemed by their own account to have lived on the edge of eternity, expecting fearful disaster at any moment. We learned that the ship had continued to sink all morning, to their great disquietude, though Waller confidently assured them that there must certainly be fathoms of good sea-water between them and the bottom when the fall ceased, as they could not possibly drop lower than the tide-line. Resting on these assurances, they had betaken themselves to lunch, and only discovered the depths of his mistake when the keel took ground, and the ship began to subside crabwise on to the launch, upsetting the table, and wrecking the saloon for the second time in eight-and-forty hours. In great affright they had then scrambled hastily on deck, and camping meanwhile on the slope where we had found them, within half-an-hour had seen the last of the water gurgle gently into the great fissure below.
Waller’s presence of mind had not failed him under this inglorious defeat of his prophetic powers, and he had immediately summoned the crew to stay the reeling ship with windlass and hawser, before she broke down the precarious support of the launch. We found this work being carried to a successful conclusion when we arrived.
After Lessaution’s warning, and as all immediate danger of the ship’s toppling was overcome, I summoned Waller and Janson to me, and explained to them my plan for more accurately bringing about the stability of the ship, and at the same time avoiding the danger of her being swamped if the waters rose again. They agreed as to the soundness of these proposals, called to them the crew, and set forth immediately to the cliff-top to collect boulders.
We of the expedition, meanwhile, having gone without lunch, attacked the meat pie which we had brought back unbroken in our haste, dining heartily, with the bare rocks for table. The ladies waited upon us most assiduously, hearing at the same time an edited account of the day’s perils, for we judged it best to keep from Lady Delahay’s ears, at any rate, the story of the great beast that roamed abroad so near her resting-place. Then we joined the crew who had ascended by devious ways the steep escarpment of the basin, and helped them collect the boulders of the moraine upon the cliff-top in quantities. Here we cast them down headlong till sufficient for my purpose were heaped beside the ship.
As night came down upon us—or rather dusk, for in those latitudes darkness was never complete—we descended in the manner first patented and approved by Lessaution, a system of travel received with great good-will and jocund outcry by the common sailor men, and then and there resolved by them into a race meeting on first principles. In which sporting event the heaviest weights in collusion with the smoothest breeches were favorites.
This combination appeared in its most perfected form in the person and habit of Mr. Rafferty, boatswain, who out-distanced all competitors. But unfortunately the rapidity of his descent was in inverse ratio to the stoutness of his nether garments, and when he rose from his too facile progress, the company turned from him with feigned unconsciousness and ill-concealed smiles. Poor Mr. Rafferty, his victory thus shamefully dulled, had to seek the shelter of the ship and his Sunday trousers, reappearing after some few minutes clad in the latter, and with a chastened air. Daring with fiery glances the titters of the crew, he thereupon joined us in our work of rolling the great stones below the ship’s timbers.
A couple of hours’ hard work saw buttresses raised sufficiently strong to avert all danger of the ship’s upsetting. From stem to stern we wedged the great boulders firmly beneath her, and alongside the edges of the cleft that gaped below her keel, and were enabled to release the hawsers from the sustaining anchors without causing her so much as a tremble. Then, thoroughly tired out, we sought supper and, finally, bed, too weary to so much as dream of the wonders of this truly astounding day.
It was a lovely calm morning when I got on deck nine or ten hours later; and the sun was pouring down into the rocky hollow, flooding us with uplifting warmth and wholesomeness. Nor did the day lose its brightness when I found Gwen pacing the deck forward, enjoying a bath of sunshine before breakfast.
“Good-morning,” said she brightly, as I stepped up. “Any the worse for your striving with beasts yesterday?”
“I suppose Gerry has let the cat out, then?” I returned. “Too bad of him. There is no good in alarming you unnecessarily.”
“But, my dear Lord Heatherslie, one doesn’t stumble over a Dinosaurus, or a Plesiosaurus, or whatever egregious monster it was, every day of one’s life. I should have been desperately annoyed if he hadn’t told me. I think it’s most delightfully exciting.”
“Do you?” said I dryly. “I think if you’d seen Lessaution squealing in his jaws yesterday, like a rabbit in a snare, you would have agreed that the pleasant excitement was rather discounted by the very unpleasant terror of it. I sincerely hope your mother has heard nothing about it.”
She smiled. “Of course not. Mother has no imagination, and a very practical dislike of the out of place. Not that a Plesiosaurus, or for the matter of that a unicorn, would be out of place in this astounding land. After what we’ve gone through I’m by no means surprised.”
“Please God he doesn’t come straggling down here,” said I devoutly. “What should you have done if he had turned up yesterday when you were all unprepared? I was nearly frantic at the thought.”
“Done? Why, gone to ground like a badger,” she answered, pointing to the cleft in the rent rock-bed. “If he’s half the size Mr. Carver makes out, we could sit in there and make faces at him. He wouldn’t have a chance to reach us.”
“What a very practical imagination you have,” I declared admiringly, as I peered over the bulwarks into the fissure. It sloped gently down from our stern into the darkness, in width about five feet—infinitely too small a space for the great brute to pass, as I could see. “That makes me feel much more comfortable. Now if by any chance he does appear, I shall know you have a refuge at hand. But we hope to kill him,” I added reassuringly.
“Kill the only Dinosaur extant!” she expostulated, “I’m convinced Monsieur Lessaution will never allow it.”
“I think after his experience of yesterday he is resigned to the sacrifice. He’ll enjoy cutting him up dead quite as much as admiring him from a distance living. Besides, according to him your sanctuary may at any moment fail you. The water, he says, may rise again as suddenly as it has disappeared.”
“My goodness! that would be humiliating, wouldn’t it? Fancy if we were safely ensconced in there, and the waters that are under the earth vomited us out into his jaws. What an ignoble end to a yachting cruise.”
“I’m afraid in any case you’ll have a rough time of it before we can get away,” said I, a little sadly. “We are going to do our best to send word to the Falklands, but it is bound to be a long business. I hope you won’t mind—much.”
She looked at me with a smile that I can only describe as distracting. “My dear Lord Heatherslie,” she said quite earnestly, “I’m looking forward to it as one of the most delightful periods of my life. I have all I want to make me happy. If it wasn’t for mother I should be quite prepared to stay here months.”
“I shouldn’t,” said I, quite gruffly, as the sound of the breakfast gong turned us toward the companion. “But then, you see, I haven’t all I want to make me happy,” and my voice shook the tiniest bit as I said it.
She half stopped at the head of the stairs, and looked at me half inquiringly. She parted her lips as if she was going to speak, but thought better of it, and ran lightly down into the cabin, where she took her seat without a word, and it struck me that she was more silent than usual during breakfast. As for me, I had no strength to waste on mere conversation, my time being fully occupied in assimilating my victuals, and in fighting down the black temper which had me in its grip.
For, truth to tell, my battle with my jealous self was wearing me sadly. I still went on loving Gwen for all I was worth, and the hopeless weeks that stretched before me wherein I must be in her constant company loomed dark and desperate. Every time she spoke to me was a pang; her very innocent friendliness an agony. No doubt physical weakness and the stress of the last few days had something to do with it, but I could have ended my existence at that time with much satisfaction to myself, and I think it was only a sneaking sense of the utter cowardliness of the thing that stayed me. You can understand that I did not linger over breakfast. I took my cigar on deck at the earliest opportunity, and wrestled there alone with the devils of despair that had me in their grip, till I felt calmer and fit again for the toils of the coming day.
I called Waller to me before the others came on deck, and we held consultation on our future movements. Our observations of the previous day had pretty well determined us that no means of launching a boat along the shores of the western cliffs was to be found. The terrible toil that would be involved in getting the sections of the launch across the rocky crevices of the moraine had decided us that we must look eastward if we wanted to find a beach to launch from before the winter closed down upon us and shut the surrounding waters with closest barriers of ice. Eastward we therefore would make our day’s quest.
Before we left I made time to investigate the cavern that opened down beneath our keel. I got a rope and fastened it to the bowsprit, and taking a turn of it round my elbow, lit a dip and crawled carefully down the sloping sides of the pit. The slant was steep, but there were numerous ledges and footholds, and about six feet below the surface a recess was hollowed out in the sides of the split, evidently caused by some lump of granite shivering off during the upheaval, and dropping further down into the fissure.
In this the damp of the receding waters still glistened, and lay in pools upon the floor. There was a bright, new riven appearance about the walls, showing that the strata-slip was recent. Bits of mica and other minerals, as yet undulled by exposure to the atmosphere, made this very plain. The huge cleft continued down in a thin well from the larger rent at the surface, losing itself in a darkness which might well be unplumbable. I could see one or two lumps of stone still sticking in the jaws of the gap—evidently remains of what had slipped down from the cavern in which I stood. Beyond these was emptiness. Though my eyes found nothing in this void, my nose was assailed by a smell of sulphur as strong as the after-blow of a blasting fuse.
I crept out again into the air, my throat very sore from the fumes that kept rising from below. I called the carpenter and one or two of the men, and set them to hack steps in the rock as far as the recess below, and directed them to cover the continuance of the fissure with planks. We unearthed a spare rudder-chain, and trailed it from a stanchion driven into the rocks. Thus we had a moderately easy passage into the chamber below, which could be used by the company at large if the Horror of the cañon attempted to attack them. So, with minds comparatively at ease, Garlicke, Gerry and I set forth to carry our exploration eastward across the glacier, leaving poor little Lessaution behind us, a melancholy object indeed, because his wounded shoulder prevented his joining us in our researches.
The eastern shore ran along the glacier edge for about a mile, gradually narrowing and mounting upward with an easy gradient. Finally the rock disappeared under the encroaching ice, and the glacier fronted on the cliff head. The chance of a landing-place between us and this point was plainly out of the question. Our plan was to surmount the glacier itself and explore the country beyond. Provided the going was not too rough or too broken by crevasses, it might be quite possible to convey the sections of our launch across it to any landing-place we might discover on the far side.
So, armed with ice-axes, we three set out as a small advance party, meaning only to go a day’s journey and then return with our report. For if no chance of a beach was likely within a reasonable distance, we should waste no more time in expeditions, but set ourselves to lower the boat down the cliffs as best we could.
All three of us have knocked about the Alps a bit. Therefore we managed our crawlings about the blue crevasses with a certain amount of ease, nor did the occasional dropping-in of an ice bridge occasion us great excitement. We were roped of course, and moved with steadiness, but after a bit found that our mountaineering muscles were not in the best of condition. Nor had we reckoned on the heat of the mid-day sun or its effect when reflected back from these glassy surfaces.
After about two hours of heavy going and copious perspiration our skins began to fray most painfully, and our faces were the hue of rosy-fingered dawn. Gerry’s expressive features were literally hanging in rags, and Garlicke and I, tougher-hided animals though we were, saw the rocks that bordered the far side of the ice-field with no small gratitude.
We left the ice and stepped out on to the narrow margin of rock that flanked it. A few paces forward we found that the crags sunk sheer from our feet. Below us, some twenty fathoms or more, a still, black pool laved their base, rippleless as a Lethean lake. At the seaward end it was broken by rocks, piled and tumbled as if tossed there by some great convulsion. It was not hard to understand how this inland sea-pool had come into being.
Originally it had been a bay or inlet with a narrow, land-locked entrance. Some upheaval—volcanic, no doubt—had shut down the guarding cliffs upon the opening as a curtain falls across a stage. The huge splinters, piled as they were across the narrows of this fiord, could scarcely be distinguished from the cliffs off which they had been rent.
At the foot of the barrier an eddy rose now and again, creaming white among the reefs that broke the sheen of the pool. This was where some subterranean entrance must keep the waters to tide-level. Now and again the shining poll of a sea-lion gleamed upon the surface, another proof that a sea-cave communicated with the outside. Opposite, on the eastward side of the bay, were cliffs as steep as those among whose pinnacles we stood, and the lake swept away inland and was lost behind a spur of the mountain-side.
This was an unexpected obstruction to our travel, and put a final stop to any idea of getting our launch to the sea from a beach. We turned to the left along the glacier edge to see what was hid from us by the flank of the hill, scrambling alternately from rock to ice. In about twenty minutes we reached the corner and rounded it. Then we saw the far end of the inlet.
Half-a-mile further on, shining and yellow below us, was a beach of sand wet with the receding tide. Streaked across it were many little rivulets, draining either from the glacier, or from sea-pools that filtered slowly through the ooze of the shore. Scarcely a ripple broke the calm. It sank down the beach, drooping imperceptibly without any of the roll that usually marks the defiant outgoing of the ebb. An oily stillness lay upon the waters.
Dotted on the strand were various black objects, some larger, some smaller, but too far distant to be distinguishable. The smooth silt ran upward between narrowing cliffs, merging into the rock rubble that climbed the mountain-side. It lost itself among the crags of the summit.
Clouds of terns and kittywakes were wheeling in the air, or strutting and scratching on the beach; the larger birds—gulls, cormorants, and such-like—were pecking and fighting over the black objects, while in solemn battalions the penguins marched and countermarched along the water’s edge.
Under the circumstances the view took the nature of an ironical jest at the hand of fate. Here at last was the very object of our search, but mocking us in the very act of discovery. A beauteous, slow-sloping shallow of lovely sand, and no outlet to the sea. The ideal place to launch our cutter, and the barrier of the cliffs lay between us and the outer ocean impenetrable.
I swore softly to myself as I realized these things, cursing the luck that dogged me maddeningly. Fate had evidently willed that I should not escape from my jealous torments yet awhile.
Gerry broke the silence.
“This place means to keep us now it’s got us, you may depend upon it,” said he. “That’s what I call a pretty strict blockade of their only port,” and he pointed down the fiord to the barrier at the far end where the rocks were piled across the entrance.
“The earthquake may have done that,” said I.
“An earthquake may have done it,” said Garlicke, “but not the one of three nights back. I can see great patches of lichen on the rocks. It’s centuries old—that great shutting of the door. Look at the banks of seaweed across it.”
Gerry had turned to stare up the ravine that rose from high-water mark to the mountain-side. Suddenly he stretched across to Garlicke for the glass, and began examining the far crags. Nothing that moved was visible to the naked eye, but as he put down the telescope he whistled softly.
“It’s either an extraordinary coincidence or a blessed funny thing,” he ejaculated.
“What?” we demanded.
“The black line that runs across the cliff up there,” he went on. “We shall find that that’s coal, when we get nearer, I don’t mind betting. Through the glass I can distinctly see the shine and gloss of it, and it’s perished and crumbled away as coal would—in square lumps.”
“Well,” said I irritably, “what if it is? Why shouldn’t there be coal? Nothing would surprise me less than to find that those black things upon the beach are patent stoves. Nothing would be too outrageous for this land of sudden upheavals.”
He looked at me with much contempt.
“Lessaution’s estimate of your intelligence was not far out,” he remarked. “Do you mean to say you have forgotten the coal the Mayans found—the ‘stone with fern marks upon it’ that burnt—the stone, that is, not the fern marks? Well, there’s your seam of stone or coal or whatever you like to call it, and here’s the very spot on which the Mayans landed three hundred years ago. That’s the place where the Beast munched up poor Alfa and Hardal. The penguins which they knocked over and roasted—or rather their descendants—are there, and this is the intricate passage by which they found harbor, only the rocks have barred the entrance. There isn’t a doubt about it.”
I looked around me, and there seemed every possibility that he was right. All these circumstances dovetailed into one another most remarkably—the coal, the sandy shore, the penguins, and what not. The only thing wanting to complete the picture was the “Great god Cay with mouth agape,” and though for the time being he was not on view, we knew only too well that he was a very unpleasant reality. So down the red-hot cliffs we scrambled for a nearer examination of these possibilities, and after half-an-hour’s toil by ways devious and hard to find dropped upon the shining sands at the bottom.