The Spanish Cave

by Geoffrey Household

  “Hello, Lola!” said Dick.

  “Hola, Ricardito! What’s new?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Pablo and I found a skull below the Cave of the Angels. …”

  “Ricardito!” Lola cut him short with a little imperious wave of her hand. “Don’t tell me about that! I don’t want to hear!”

  “What’s there to be afraid of in an old skull?” said Dick in his most superior manner. “Why, it had barnacles on it!”

  “You beastly little heathen!” Lola cried.

  “I’m not a heathen!” declared Dick indignantly. “My grandfather was a bishop. He wore a skirt!”

  “My grandfather had a great-grandfather whose great-grandfather governed all America,” remarked Lola quietly. If Dick was going to bring ancestors into the argument, he hadn’t a chance of competing.

  “One of those chaps who were always being beaten by the English?” asked Dick.

  “They weren’t beaten!” Lola exclaimed. “And the English were pirates! And when they were caught they were hung!”

  “I suppose you haven’t heard of Drake,” said Dick sarcastically.

  “Of course I have! He was a heathen pirate who sacked towns when there wasn’t any war going on!”

  “He beat the Spaniards anyway,” Dick said.

  “Of course he did,” answered Lola. “Because we weren’t expecting him. It wasn’t fair.”

  “Bosh!” said Dick, giving up the argument. “And I’d rather be a heathen pirate than believe there’s a ghost in the Cave of the Angels that eats people!”

  “Will you stop!” cried Lola, putting her hands over her ears. “I tell you I don’t want to talk about it! It’s unlucky.”

  “Fancy being a countess and afraid of ghosts!” jeered Dick.

  “Well, if you aren’t afraid of them, go and spend a night in the cave!” snapped Lola, her blue eyes flashing with temper.

  “I will,” said Dick. “I’ll go to-night. You see if I don’t!”

  He marched out of the dairy, whistling. Lola laughed at him till he was out of sight. Then she sat down on the floor and cried, with her head resting on the edge of a tub of milk and her two long black plaits floating on the surface.

  Dick had intended to stand watch over the cave in the daytime, not at night. But he had accepted the dare and there was no getting out of it. Anyway, he did not think he would be very frightened. Many a time he had been on and about the cliffs after nightfall. With Hal he had bathed in the coves by moonlight, and, though it was forbidden, had sometimes slipped out on hot nights to bathe by himself.

  “I’ll show that dago girl!” he declared, kicking an empty tin that lay in his path so that it shot over the hedge like a bullet.

  Dick had a lot of plain commonsense. The one thing that annoyed him about his friends—all except Father Juan—was their superstition. When Pablo wouldn’t let him whistle in the boat because it was unlucky, or Paca stuck a needle in his coat to keep witches away, Dick longed to make fun of them. But since he had caught something of the Spanish politeness he never said what he thought. He was wickedly glad that he had to spend a night in the Cave of the Angels; it would shock everybody, and be a kind of revenge for all the times he had kept his mouth shut.

  Hal, he knew, would not be home that night. He was far up in the mountains, planning the course of the line which, burrowing under the peaks and spanning the torrents and zig-zagging up the slopes, would link Villadonga and its valley to the rest of Spain. As for Paca, she would be none the wiser if he stayed out all night.

  He had supper, sitting all alone at the head of the long, massive dining-table. Then he went up to his room and waited until he heard Paca go to bed. Soon afterwards the sound of her hearty snores rumbled along the corridors of the house. Dick crept down the stairs, which creaked so that anyone but Paca would have been awakened, and explored the larder. He filled a leather bottle with water, and cut himself a foot of chorizo, hard, highly spiced sausage that was easy to carry and always tasted better out of doors than it did in the house. Hal had impressed it on him long since that he should never go alone into wild country without food and water; for, said Hal, one never knows what may happen.

  “One never knows what may happen,” repeated Dick to himself as he slung the leather bottle at his waist and dropped the sausage into his shirt—a bad habit he had learned from Pablo.

  Cutting across the fields to avoid meeting any of the villagers, he soon hit the grass track that followed the valley behind the cliffs. Villadonga lay on a narrow strip of low-lying plain, which ran for miles between the cliffs and the mountains. In places there were streams, and fields where cattle pastured, but most of the plain was covered with great white boulders and broken by rocky holes full of sea water which had come up underground. Some two miles inland the ground rose sharply, soaring up to the Cantabrian Mountains—the Peaks of Europe, as the Spaniards call them—which formed an unbroken line of precipices where wolves and boars lived undisturbed. No railway and only the roughest roads crossed them, so that Villadonga was cut off from the world. The easiest way of getting to the villages of the little plain was by sea—but by sea few strangers came. The liners and the deep-sea fishing fleets passed far out, for there were no commercial ports within fifty miles.

  Dick easily threaded his way between the boulders and round the coves, for he knew the path. It was about five miles from Villadonga to the Cave of the Angels, and after an hour-and-a-half’s walking he guessed he must be close by it. He turned off the path and climbed the gentle slope to his left until the ground stopped short as if cut by a knife. There below him was the Atlantic, calm and dark save for the white phosphorescent patches where a ripple plashed on a rock or a fish broke the surface.

  The cave lay a little to his right, half-way down the cliff. A faint gleam of light shone from its mouth, and instantly Dick dropped on his stomach to watch. Then he remembered St. Andrew—perhaps someone had lighted a candle before the image. He had seen stumps of candles there before. He climbed cautiously down the cliff and peered into the cave. That was it. A candle was burning down in front of the saint, and his thin face, carved by some unknown artist in the Middle Ages, seemed to smile less sternly in the flickering light. As Dick entered the cave the candle went out.

  Dick first explored the cave with his flash-light. He saw no more than he had always seen; a hollow running back not more than twenty feet, with bare rock walls on which the pious had carved some short prayers, and the impious their initials. Now that he knew there was nothing in the cave behind him, he sat down at the mouth, with his legs dangling over the sea. It occurred to him that he might be the first person to have spent a night in the cave for hundreds of years. And in that he was perfectly right.

  There was no sound in the world but the lap of the little waves at his feet. The silence did not frighten him. He picked out the stars that he knew, and watched the Great Bear slowly wheel overhead as the night wore on. Sometimes he cut a piece of his sausage and chewed it slowly for something to do.

  Meanwhile the level of the sea rose. It was one of the two highest tides of the year, the spring tide nearest to the September equinox, and the water rose and rose until it was only a little distance below his feet. He was tempted to dive in and have a swim, for he could easily climb up again; but something held him back. He didn’t want to go into the water—not now. He shivered a little, and switched his flash-light on to the back of the cave. It gave him a sense of security to see that St. Andrew was still standing calmly in his place. The tide was at its very height now, and he felt, as men do when the tide turns, that all the shore and the life of the shore were expecting something.

  Suddenly the air was shaken by a sound. It was more a vibration than a sound. It was like the noise that a ship makes when the steam is rushing through the siren without enough force to blow it. The air quivered, and Dick thought he heard a high, powerful scream—but on so high a note that it could hardly be heard at all. He peered out to sea, straining his ey
es through the darkness. He saw the water break into an arrow of white foam as something cut through it moving fast out to sea. He could just make out a massive object which broke the surface and then disappeared. It looked like a submarine.

  The night was silent again. Dick thought that he must have exaggerated the size of the mass that foamed through the water; perhaps it was merely a porpoise leaping and diving in pursuit of a school of fish. But then the waves that curled away from the thing’s course broke on a rock near by. Dick, like everyone who sails a small boat, had been tossed about in the wash from a passing steamer. He reckoned that the boat, if it were a boat, that had caused the wash now breaking on the rock, must have powerful engines and be bigger than any of the fishing craft along the coast.

  Dick no longer felt that the sea was friendly. He sat down as far away from it as he could get, right at the back of the cave. He was proud of himself, and thrilled at his discovery that there really was some mystery in the waters beneath him. But he knew that he had been in danger, and would have given a lot to know what it was.

  Then he thought he heard a voice call his name. It was weird, and Dick was frightened. He froze, holding his breath so as to hear every murmur of the night.

  The voice called again:

  “Hola, Ricardito!”

  This time he recognised it. He ran to the cave’s mouth. There below him was a boat, and Lola in it.

  “Oh, there you are!” said Lola, trying to keep her voice as matter-of-fact as possible.

  “Whatever are you doing here?” asked Dick, amazed.

  “I thought you’d be lonely,” she answered airily, “so I just came along.”

  But she couldn’t keep up her pretence any longer.

  “Ricardito!” she cried, her deep, hoarse, little voice breaking with anxiety. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re not hurt! It’s all my fault you came here. I’ll never forgive myself, Ricardito!”

  Dick cut the water in a neat dive, and swam out to her.

  “Darn it!” he grumbled to himself. “What does she want to make all this fuss for?”

  He hauled himself aboard and sat on the thwart, dripping, and laughing at her.

  “I’m glad I’m not alone any more,” said Lola humbly. “There wasn’t much wind, and I didn’t think I’d ever get to you. And then a big boat passed close to, and the wash nearly upset me.”

  “Did you see it?” asked Dick eagerly.

  “No,” Lola answered. “The drunken pigs didn’t carry any lights.”

  “Are you sure it was a boat?”

  “What else could it have been?” replied Lola wonderingly. “But didn’t you hear it, Ricardito?”

  Dick hesitated a moment before he answered. He decided to tell his story only to Hal. He did not want to get all the villagers excited; it would spoil his chances of solving the mystery.

  “I heard something that sounded like steam escaping,” he said guardedly.

  “Yes, that was it—a nasty, powerful, thin sound. It was horrid, not like any ship I’ve ever heard. I’d have got under the bedclothes if there had been any,” said Lola.

  Dick was suddenly struck by her amazing courage. Believing in all sorts of devils that he didn’t believe in at all, she had yet sailed out to the Cave of the Angels in the middle of the night. And she had dared it not from sheer pride like Dick, but because she felt that she had landed a friend in a mess, and that it was up to her to see him through it.

  “Lola! You’ve got guts!” exclaimed Dick in English.

  “What does that mean, Ricardito?” Lola asked.

  Dick, without thinking, translated the words literally into Spanish.

  “Of course I have,” said Lola calmly.

  Dick blushed furiously in the darkness.

  “I mean you’re a brave girl,” he explained.

  “Oh!—even if I am a countess!” remarked Lola, giggling.

  “I didn’t mean it when I said that—about countesses being afraid of ghosts,” apologised Dick.

  “Well, I’m sorry I said you were a little heathen,” Lola replied.

  There was a silence of several minutes while each of them thought what a good companion the other was. Then Dick, puzzled, asked:

  “What made you so sure that I would really come here?”

  “Silly!” answered Lola in her deep voice, looking as wise and motherly as was possible for a girl of her age. “I know you. If you said you’d go, go you would.”

  The breeze freshened, for dawn was not far away. Lola was caught unawares, and the mainsail swung over with a crash. Dick jumped for the tiller and stood out from the cliffs, with the water singing a happy song as it gurgled under the bows.

  “Why, this is Pablo’s boat!” exclaimed Dick as he felt how she answered the helm. “Did you take it without asking him? He’ll be furious if we don’t get it back before morning.”

  “And if mother finds out that I’m not in bed, she’ll be furiouser,” said Lola.

  “You’d better run back by land,” Dick suggested. “Then nobody will be awake when you get in. I’ll take the boat back.”

  “I won’t walk at night,” said Lola flatly. “I’m frightened. That’s why I came by sea.”

  “It will soon be light—look!”

  The dawn was coming up; a red and angry sky.

  “All right,” Lola said. “I’ll just make it if I hurry.”

  Dick went about, and ran in close under the cliffs.

  “Jump!” he yelled.

  Plaits and legs flying, Lola jumped and landed safely.

  “Good-bye, heathen dear!” she cried. “See you this afternoon?”

  “You bet you will, Lolita!” answered Dick.

  The wind was coming out of the dawn; then it veered to the north-west, freshening every minute. Sailing close-hauled, Dick stood well out to sea to clear Offering Key. The boat shot from wave to wave in a smother of foam, and Dick sang at the tiller from sheer joy in the movement. After a while, he stopped singing, jammed the boat into the wind, and took in two reefs. She sailed more easily now, but still the wind rose, and the western sky turned from pearl grey to black. Just off the Key the first squall hit him. The rain lashed his face and the wind laid the boat over on her beam ends. At the same time a big, leisurely, white-capped roller came over the bows with a crash, and filled the boat with three inches of water.

  “This won’t do,” said Dick to himself. “I can’t make it.”

  He wore the boat around, taking a shower of spray as he did so, and ran before the wind. He hadn’t a very clear idea of what he was going to do, but it was obvious that he could not face those seas in a fifteen-foot dinghy. Tearing towards the cliffs, he thought it out. His best chance was to run for a cove beyond the Cave of the Angels, and beach the boat. He put the helm down and raced back on the course he had come. When a wave bigger than its grey companions bore down upon him, he swung the bows into it, as Pablo had taught him, rode triumphantly over it, and then continued his course.

  He was now nearly opposite the cave, and much too close to the cliffs for his comfort. The waves were pounding and spouting on the shallow ledge where Pablo had dived for the anchor the day before. Dick, desperate, tried to tack, but the boat hung in the trough of a wave, and the next caught it and hurled it towards the cliff. The tide, the spring tide which had nearly reached his feet as he sat in the cave, was falling fast; any wave now might fling the boat on the bottom. Dick fought manfully to keep off the lee-shore. The gallant boat took the heavy seas like a steeplechaser going over hurdles, and even with death before his eyes Dick felt a wild pleasure at the way she answered his small hand on the tiller. But it was a losing battle. For every yard he made he was flung back two.

  Still, there was a chance. Dick ran straight for the shore, tossed madly by the waves which, without order or discipline, were leaping up and down over the ledge. He meant to wreck the boat and jump for it, as Lola had jumped two hours before. He looked over his shoulder. Coming down from the north was a wav
e such as he had never seen. It caught up the spouting water in its course and carried it forward in a great, grim, orderly mass, topped with white. Dick tried to go about and ride over it, but he was too late. It curled over the boat, shutting out the sky. Dick drew a deep breath. The wave fell.

  He went down under the weight of water, down and down, waiting for the rock bottom which would smash him to pieces. Whirled back and forth, head over heels, and ever downwards, a thought sprang into his mind as clearly as if he had heard Father Juan’s voice:

  “Fifty fathoms and no bottom! Fifty fathoms and no bottom!”

  The whirling stopped. With bursting lungs he shot upwards like a cork. The water around him was no longer white with dizzy streaks of foam and bubbles, but jet black and smooth. At last, at the limit of his endurance, he came to the surface. He filled his lungs again and again with the precious air, treading water meanwhile. It was pitch dark. A great oily swell was heaving him up and down. Too dazed to know or care what had happened to him, he struck out feebly into the blackness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ON the morning of Dick’s disappearance, the steam-launch San José went down with all hands. She was a deep-sea fishing boat of a type used all along the north coast of Spain; an undecked wooden launch, fifty feet long, with the simplest kind of steam engine amidships. These launches looked the most top-heavy craft, for a brightly painted boiler, topped by an unwieldy funnel, stuck up high above the sides of the boat. Actually, they were wonderfully seaworthy. The weight of engine, water, and fuel acted as ballast, and they could roll, pitch, and waddle through heavy seas without shipping a drop of water. The most frequent accident was the parting of the funnel stays. In that case the funnel went overboard, and the crew came back from the voyage as black as negroes from the blinding smoke.