Major Vigoureux Part 45

They breasted the slope and arrived at the rock panting, after seven or eight minutes' climb. It was the same on which Sam Leggo had last seen the Lord Proprietor sitting with his gun across his knees. But why she had brought them to this spot the two men were as far as ever from guessing; for almost straight beneath them lay the sea.

After a minute's rest Vashti lowered herself over the western edge of the rock, at the same time warning them to follow with extreme caution; and so all three came to the ledge of the adit. But their business did not lie here. Indeed, in the darkness neither Sir Ommaney nor the Commandant observed the opening, and Vashti had no leisure to call their attention to it. Clambering, still to the left, across a boulder which fairly overhung the sea, she struck a match, lit the candle in her lantern, and held it up before a dark hole--a second adit--pierced in the cliff-side and running west, as the other ran south-by-east.

"Be careful, now!" she warned them again, and ducked her head as she entered the tunnel, which was scarcely more than five feet high. They stooped and followed down the slope of it for about thirty yards, and halted behind her as she waved the lantern over what appeared at first to be a terrific chasm, opening at her feet.

"Eli, ahoy! Ahoy, there!" she called.

"Ahoy!" the voice came up from the depths. "Ahoy, there, Vashti!"

"I have brought the Commandant, with a friend--and the tackle. Shall I fix it here?"

"That's no work for you, my dear," called up Eli. "Let them come down if they've heads for it, and afterwards I can climb up and fix it. Or, stay! Let the one come down, and the other bide aloft, to help me."

"Do you dare?" Vashti asked the Commandant, pointing down to the pit, and then with a wave of her lantern indicating the stairway by which he must descend. It was a ladder of rope, suspended from an iron bar driven into the solid rock about a foot above the floor-level on which they stood. It dangled down into darkness, and the Commandant perceived to his horror that its iron rungs lay close against the cliff.

"Surely you are never going down that way?" he asked.

But Vashti was already stooping to slip off her shoes.

"You need not follow unless you choose."

"Where you go, I go. Let me lead the way."

But while he unlaced and kicked off his boots she had already grasped the iron bar and swung herself out over the abyss, feeling with her toes for a rung and a good foothold.

"For my part," said Sir Ommaney, controlling with some difficulty the tremor of his voice as he saw her anch.o.r.ed safely for the moment, "I am content to smoke a pipe here and wait. For G.o.d's sake be careful you two!" he added, as the Commandant also gripped the bar, then a rung, and began to lower himself.

Far below the Commandant could see a light glimmering, drawing faint twinkles from the wet rock around him. Just beneath him he could hear Vashti's hands rhythmically catching at the rungs--down, down.... Once his feet slipped from the staves, and he hung for a moment by his hand-grip only. Twice Vashti spoke up to him, warning him to press a knee against the rock, and so make room for his toes to catch the rungs.... At length they reached a point where the ladder hung clear of the cliff; but here a hand from below caught it and held it steady.

"Nervous work, sir!" said Eli Tregarthen, as the Commandant, with a gasp of relief, felt his feet touch solid rock.

"But where are we?" demanded the Commandant; for close at hand sounded the boom of heavy waves.

"In Piper's Hole."

The Commandant stared aloft. Slowly the explanation dawned on him. The adit, piercing its way from the cliff top, broke through the wall of the cave, high up, close to the roof. He turned, and his eyes followed Vashti, who had caught up Eli's lantern, and was picking her way across the rocky floor. Presently she bent to a kneeling posture, as the rays fell on what at first appeared to be a long bundle. He hurried after her, but stopped short with a cry.

"Sir Caesar!"

"Even so, my friend. Alive, thanks to our friends here; and, but for a shaking and a twisted ankle, sound as well as safe. Yes, and the ankle is mending, thanks to Miss Cara's skill and a plenty of salt-water bandages."

The Lord Proprietor's face was pale as he leaned on his elbow and stared at the Commandant across the lantern. It was scratched, too, and scarred; but it was the face of a sound man.

"But how in the world----?"

"Easily enough. I was leaning over the cliff above here, with my gun beside me, when a piece of earth gave way under my head. I went down the slope head foremost, as I guess, and my coat must have caught in the gun's trigger-guard. At any rate, it went off, and by the mercy of Heaven without wounding me; but either the noise of it stunned me or the fall must have knocked me foolish, for tumbling among the bushes that grow in the hollow above the cave's entrance, I had not the sense to catch hold, but slid through them, and clean over the edge into the sea."

"Eh? But pardon me, how can you possibly remember this?" stammered the Commandant.

"I saw it," said Vashti, quietly.

"Oh!" The Commandant stared at her, and began to understand. "So you _were_ the mermaid!"

She nodded. "I happened to be on the rock, outside the entrance, with my small boat lying in a low spot under its eastern shelter, and so I put off to him at once. There was a strong run of water into the cave; the depth was not above three feet when the waves ran back. So I clutched hold of him--though making sure he was dead--and drew him into the cave, above high-water mark. It was hard work, though not so hard as dragging the boat after us."

"Why should you want to drag the boat so far?... You don't mean to tell me that you have been hiding here, on purpose, while the search has been going on all around you!"

Vashti laughed. "Why, of course we have! I heard you and Mr. Rogers last night. You were standing together on the very spot over which I had hauled the boat: only I had taken the precaution to smooth the sand over the track of her keel. From the ridge of rock there I launched her on the freshwater pool, and paddled her across with the Lord Proprietor safe on board. I was dreadfully afraid, while I listened to your voices, that you would cross the pool and discover her.

"It lies close?"

"About thirty yards from where we stand."

"To confess the truth," put in the Lord Proprietor, "my fall seems to have knocked some daylight into me, or else Miss Vashti is a witch.

While she bound up my hurts we had some conversation together----"

"It was I who did the talking," interposed Vashti.

"And that, perhaps, explains why in so short a while I learnt so much.

I learnt enough, sir, at any rate, of you and of Eli Tregarthen to make me suspect that I had done you both some injustice. I was willing to hear more; to prolong the adventure which"--he bowed after a fas.h.i.+on towards Vashti, and not ungallantly--"had its--er--romantic side. I decided that if Miss Cara spoke with knowledge, it would do me good to see myself for a brief while as others in the Islands see me, even to hear what they said of me by way of obituary criticism."

He paused at a sound on the far side of the cave. It came from the ladder; the sound of Eli's hobnailed boots, rung upon rung, as he climbed aloft towards the adit, to fasten the tackle there.

"It seems a monstrous height to be swung in air, helpless as a babe.

But Tregarthen says it can be done, and I am willing to trust him. If at the top you can rig up some kind of litter for me, and convey me home without noise ... I have a fancy, and it is also Miss Cara's, that we keep the main part of this mystery to ourselves. But who is the helper aloft there?"

"Sir Ommaney Ward."

"Hey?"

"Sir Ommaney Ward."

"The devil! And I sent for him! Forgive me, Commandant----"

"And excuse me, Sir Caesar, but I prefer to believe he is here because my letter brought him."

The Lord Proprietor held out his hand.

"Will you take it, Commandant? Miss Cara has told me of that letter.

You are a good man, and I have wronged you."

CHAPTER XXIX

CONCLUSION