“Hal and I will see to that,” said Dick, “if Captain Olazábal can bring us from Bilbao a mile of cable, well enough insulated to stand being dragged under water.”
Olazábal made a note of it.
“And one thing more, caballeros” said Echegaray. “I think you will agree that for the time being none of us should speak of our discovery nor of what we intend to do—except, of course, to our good friend, Don Enrico Garland. And I would like you to forget the name of my revolutionary friend in Bilbao. Do you give me your words of honour?”
“I do,” each of them answered.
“How soon can the Erreguiña make the round trip, Olazábal?”
“If I push her, we’ll be back about mid-day the day after to-morrow,” replied the captain.
“Good! I’ll wire the yard to give you coal and any stores and money you need.”
The party broke up. An hour later the Erreguiña was foaming out to sea. Hal and Dick were charging storage batteries at their dynamo. Pablo was trying not to talk in the village tavern—a most difficult task, for he looked obviously loaded with secrets. And Echegaray, having stayed to supper with Father Juan, was having an argument with his host, as courteous and merciless as a duel, about the origin of the Basques.
The next day and a half passed very slowly for Dick, although he and Hal worked steadily. They made two buzzers and tappers, and rubbed up their Morse code by telegraphing to each other between the house and the garden. Dick insisted on doing most of the sending.
“My messages will be the most important,” he said, “because I’m going in the boat.”
“I’ll be hanged if you are,” answered Hal. “You don’t realise that the party in the boat has a slim chance of ever getting out alive—that is, if there’s a word of truth in the whole yarn.”
“Orders!” said Dick proudly. “Echegaray wants me.”
Don Ramon and the two brothers thrashed the question out at lunch on the second day.
“There are three people,” said Echegaray, “who have a right to see what is in that cave—and they are probably the only people who ever will. Dick, because he’s gone through more than any of us. Pablo, because he represents the fishermen of the coast. And I, because I want revenge for the loss of the San José and the Daphne”
“I don’t care, Don Ramon,” Hal replied. “I’m responsible for my brother. You’ll have to take me, not him.”
“And I’m responsible for the expedition,” Echegaray retorted. “You know I’d like to take you, but two heavyweights in the boat are enough. And I do want a small third person to look after the motor and the telegraph, for Pablo and I will have our hands full. Your job, Don Enrico, will be to remain on top of the rock at the other end of the telegraph. I’ll see that you are armed, for I wouldn’t be surprised if you get enough danger there to satisfy even you. Olazábal will be standing by off the Cave of the Angels in the Erreguiña”
Hal still shook his head.
“I’ll toss you for it,” proposed Dick.
“All right,” Hal answered.
Echegaray whipped a coin out of his pocket and slammed it on the table with his hand over it.
“Heads, Dick goes in the boat! Tails, Hal goes! Do you agree, friends and caballeros?”
“Right!” they said.
“Heads it is!” announced Echegaray, lifting his hand and showing the coin.
He did not show the other side of it. That was a head, too. Echegaray had his own reasons for wishing to test Dick’s courage and presence of mind.
They were interrupted by two stalwart seamen rolling a drum of telegraph cable up to the door, and two more carrying the outboard motor between them. They were followed by Olazábal, who looked ready for any adventure, with his beret falling over one ear, and an expensive cigar nearly burning the tip of the other.
“The oranges are still on board,” said Olazábal. “Your friend loaded the crate, and told me I wasn’t to move it.”
“Fine!” answered Echegaray. “And now let’s pick up Pablo, and all take a little trip out to sea. We won’t want the crew, captain. Just you and the engineer will be enough.”
They all strolled down to the quay, and went on board the Erreguiña. Olazábal let the crew go, and, after exchanging a few terse remarks with the engineer on the subject of Echegaray’s unaccountable whims, took the boat down the estuary, and on into the open sea.
“We’ll have a taste of the oranges now,” said Echegaray, when they were out of sight of Villadonga.
He opened the crate. The oranges were of fine size, and very carefully packed.
“Beauties, aren’t they?” remarked Don Ramon, choosing one at random, and looking it over with admiration.
He drew a slit around it with his knife, and tore off the skin in two halves, which came apart much more easily than in any ordinary orange. Within was a shining steel ball with a wire sealed to its surface. Echegaray broke the seal, pulled the wire, and swinging his arm over his head sent the ball hurtling into the sea.
There was a flash, a roar, and a great spout of water.
“Food for the beast,” said Echegaray. “You were asking for dynamite, Olazábal, but I expect this mixture will do as well. It’s mostly T.N.T.”
The fruit being satisfactorily tested, they went about and ran back to Villadonga. Before taking the crate ashore, Echegaray selected three of the bombs and left them on board the Erreguiña.
“You’ll be our third line of attack, Olazábal,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ll see any fighting, but we won’t leave you unarmed.”
Olazábal gave a twist to his beret, and weighed one of the deadly little fruits in his broad palm. Dick looked up at him with awe. The captain could hurl death with the speed and accuracy of mid-off in a Test Match.
They carried the crate up to the house, and laid it, carefully padded, in the ox-cart, together with the drum of cable, the batteries, the outboard motor, a tank of petrol, and an acetylene headlight. Pablo and Olazábal strolled ahead of the oxen, which seemed to be imitating their rolling walk. Dick rode in the cart, while Hal and Echegaray followed behind. They looked like a party of travelling carpenters starting out for a new job.
Pushing, hauling, and yelling to the oxen, they got the cart off the track and up the slope to the oak grove, where they unloaded their cargo. With blocks and tackle they edged the drum of cable through the mouth of the cave and down on to the rock. Hal and Dick mounted it on an axle so that it would revolve freely, and connected the instruments. Meanwhile Pablo and Echegaray attached the motor to the stern of the boat, and Olazábal fixed the headlight in the bows. At sunset they lit naphtha flares on the rock to illumine their underground workshop. When Father Juan, arriving after dinner, peered into the cave, the scene below him with its flames, ladders, and toiling figures stripped to the waist, reminded him of a picture of hell in an ancient bible.
“Hola, padre!” called Don Ramon, mopping the sweat from his eyes.
“Have you got a job for me?” asked the priest.
“Not now—we’re nearly through. But I will have to-morrow. Will you spend a morning with Don Enrico on top of the rock?”
“Surely,” answered Father Juan. “What will be our duties?”
“Did you ever hunt rabbits with a ferret?” asked Echegaray.
“Yes, as a boy.”
“Well, this boat is the ferret. We are going into the hole after our rabbit, and we’ll probably kill in the darkness underground. But if we don’t we may bolt him, and he’ll make for the mouth of his hole. In that case you two will bombard him like a pair of hunters on a Sunday—I mean, Saturday—morning.”
“And if the ferret never comes out?” enquired Father Juan.
“Luck is the master of all, as the song says,” answered Pablo. “Moreover, the ferret has sharp teeth.”
He pointed to the rack of steel balls, now stripped of their disguise.
“Hm’m,” said Father Juan, “I suspected that your oranges would be something
of that sort. If ever your friend uses those on human beings, Don Ramon, I’ll consider myself absolved of my promise.”
“When he does use them,” replied Echegaray, “there won’t be any more need of secrecy.”
It was eleven at night before they returned to Villadonga. Paca met them at the bridge, and announced that she had prepared supper for all. She had, indeed. The long table groaned with cold partridges, a whole roast sucking-pig, hams cured in the mountain sun, and great wedges of Paca’s home-made bread. Silent and thoughtful, quite unlike her usual tempestuous self, she hovered around the table, filling plates and glasses. She kissed Dick good-night as tenderly as if she were his mother.
Pablo and Olazábal rolled home arm in arm, each singing a different song and quite unaware of it. Father Juan followed them at a discreet distance. Hal went to bed, and Echegaray was left alone at the table. He put his feet on the edge of it, tilted back his chair, and lit a cigar.
“And now, friend,” he said when Paca came in to collect the dishes, “tell me what’s the matter.”
“Take care of the boy,” she answered.
“Do you think he’s likely to be in danger?” asked Echegaray.
“You needn’t tell me anything if you don’t want to,” said Paca gently, “but I can see from your faces that you have found out the secret of the cave. I don’t know what it is—only that it is dangerous. That much my family has always known. Swear to me that you will take care of the boy, master.”
“Why do you call me master?” asked Echegaray, holding her eyes with a long stare.
“Because I have a little of the ancient knowledge, but you—have it all.”
“I thought you were one of us, but you wouldn’t admit it,” said Don Ramon.
He stood up and raised his hand above his head. His nostrils flared wide, and his face took on the uncanny beauty of a great animal about to spring.
“My blessing be on you, little sister! I swear to you by the blood that our ancestors worshipped that no harm shall come to the boy while I live.”
“Swear to me also on the Cross of our Lord, whom we worship,” said Paca obstinately.
“As a faithful son of the Church, I swear to you also on the Cross of our Lord,” answered Echegaray.
Paca bowed her head in thanks, and left him. At the door she turned back.
“And if you should die, master,” she asked, “is there one prepared to take your place?”
“None is prepared,” said Echegaray sadly. “I have no son, nor have I ever mingled my blood with that of any youth in the rite of adoption.”
“It shall be mingled,” uttered Paca in a strange voice, with her eyes fixed on the rafters above his head.
“Is that a hope?” Echegaray asked. “Or do you speak as one who has seen what shall come?”
“As one who has seen,” Paca answered.
CHAPTER SIX
AT ten in the morning the party were assembled in the oak grove at the entrance to the cave. It was a clear, fresh day with little puffs of wind that travelled over the grass like the shadows of clouds. For awhile they lay and talked under the low canopy of the trees, all of them reluctant to leave the sane and lovely hillside for the black labyrinth of rock and water. The sound of a ship’s siren drifted across the valley, a reminder of the sea, two miles away and yet coiling among the rocks under their feet. It was Olazábal tooting the Erreguiña’s whistle as a signal that he was in position off the coast.
“Stations, gentlemen!” said Echegaray.
They shook hands. Then he, Pablo, and Dick went down the rope ladder and took their places in the boat.
The headlight fizzled, flickered, and burned brightly, throwing a powerful beam which glittered on the smooth, damp walls of the cavern. Dick gave the flywheel a turn, and the motor chugged into life.
“Adios, and a good journey!” called Father Juan.
“Hasta la vuelta—Till we return!” they answered.
The boat slid round a bend in the channel and disappeared. The noise of the motor faded away. Hal sat at the telegraph, watching the cable reel steadily off the drum. Father Juan produced a small black bag from under his cassock.
“What have you got there, padre?” asked Hal.
“The only supplies that Echegaray forgot,” replied Father Juan. “Bandages, antiseptics, a tourniquet, and a few simple surgical instruments. I didn’t like to bring them out before. It might have been a little—er— depressing to the party.”
“It depresses me all right,” said Hal. “They show that you believe in Echegaray’s theory. I’m afraid I’ve been taking it with a grain of salt.”
“You see, you didn’t hear him tell it,” said Father Juan.
The revolving drum slowed and stopped. A minute later Dick’s first message came through:
“Big cleft on our right. Can hear a waterfall somewhere inside. Are keeping straight on. General direction due south.”
Some two hundred yards of cable reeled off the drum. It slackened, stopped, and started again in little jerks.
“The ferret is uncertain which hole to follow,” said Father Juan.
“What are you doing?” tapped Hal.
“Small cave here with many openings,” came the answer from Dick. “We are exploring them all.”
“O.K. How’s everything?” Hal replied.
“Smelly.”
There was silence for quarter of an hour. Then the buzzer purred insistently.
“Lost our way. Don’t know which hole we came in by. Echegaray says reel up wire if you can.”
Hal and Father Juan put their shoulders to the drum and slowly turned it till a hundred yards of wet cable were wound up. It was covered with slime from the bottom, and they got a taste of the atmosphere of decay through which the boat was passing.
“Thanks,” said the telegraph. “You pulled the boat back and showed us how we got in. Trying another hole now.”
The cable whirred off the drum for five minutes, and then stopped. A long message came through from the boat:
“Have arrived at end of tide water. Fish. Mudbank ahead of us. Thousands. Noses against it.”
“What does he say?” asked Father Juan.
“They’ve got to the end of the channel,” answered Hal. “And he’s all excited about some fish. I can’t make much of it.”
“Tell us more,” he tapped.
“Going ashore. Will explain later,” Dick replied. “Don’t expect any messages for little time.”
Hal swore. Then either they were within striking distance of their quarry, or—a thought which made him glance murderously at the two stripped oranges within reach of his hand—the creature was now between them and their line of retreat. He told himself that they could not be in danger once they were off the water, but the fact remained that if they did get caught away from the boat, there would be no means of communication.
Meanwhile Dick and the two men had almost forgotten the object of their expedition in wonder at the extraordinary sight revealed by the sputtering glare of the headlight. The channel was blocked by a steep slope of mud over which were seeping little streams of fresh water. The mud was covered with pieces of jelly which slid slowly and greasily down the bank to the bottom. This jelly was brown in the beam of light, but, outside it, shone with a faint, violet phosphorescence of its own. Where the mud met the water there was a broad ribbon of silver, shivering with greed and excitement. It was formed of the noses and backs of fish, which pressed against the mud nibbling and sucking, rank upon rank of them continually sliding and squirming over each other. The cave was filled with a faint lapping sound caused by the tens of thousands of tiny mouths pecking at the jelly. Sometimes the ranks were broken as dogfish plunged into the shoal and tore at the shimmering bodies; but never for an instant was there an empty space along the mud-bank. For every square foot of fish that vanished into the swirling, snapping jaws, masses rose from the bottom to press into their places.
“Jellyfish!” exclaimed Pablo. “Jell
yfish—I spit in the milk!”
Echegaray lifted a scrap of the jelly on the blade of an oar, and examined it in the glare of the headlight.
“No,” he said. “I think they’re algæ. But I’ve never seen such big colonies in the sea. They must be fresh-water algæ.”
“What are algæ?” asked Dick.
“Plants. Very primitive plants. There are tons of them to every acre of sea, and they feed the fish just as grass feeds the land animals. But they’re so small you can’t see them unless they form colonies.”
“What do they eat?” Dick asked.
“They don’t eat. Water and minerals and light are all they want. I don’t know where these get their light, but we’ll climb up the bank if we can and see what’s on top. Back her down, Dick, and then run her nose hard into the bank.”
Dick backed the boat into the darkness, and then charged the bank. It squelched and gave under the bows. The propeller churned up eddies of scum and little fish.
“That’ll do,” said Echegaray. “Now let’s see if the mud will bear,”
Pablo gingerly let himself over the side of the boat. He sank up to his knees in yellow slime, and began floundering up the bank.
“It’s soft,” he reported, “but there’s no suck.”
Dick and Don Ramon followed him. They could not pull their feet clear of the thick tidal mud, but shambled forwards a few inches at each step. Their movements stirred up a rich, strong smell that was not unpleasant after the odour of decay that pervaded the dark channel behind. Halfway up the slope the mud became shallower and the going easier. A moment later they were on a fairly level terrace of hard rock. A few inches of water trickled over it, covered by the jelly-like algæ as thick as green scum on a pond.
They saw that they were in a last cave, well above the high-water mark. It was not so wide as some of the underground lakes through which they had passed, but of vast height. A shaft of white light shot down from a rift, like a window high up in the nave of some cathedral, picking out a smooth slope of rock carpeted with the bluish-brown jelly. Evidently this was the parent patch, from which all the floating scum had broken away.
The Spanish Cave Page 8
