The Spanish Cave

by Geoffrey Household

  The blood from the torn neck splashed at her feet. It was this that made her look up. In the savage, meaningless stare, she thought she recognised pain. Lola hated pain, and even in her terror felt pity for the mangled beast. The eyes of the girl and the reptile held each other for a second. The creature did not understand pity; there was no room in its tiny brain for that. But there was room for the one thought that all animals may think—is this dangerous? Whatever waves of intelligence can pass between two living things told it that the unknown object was not dangerous. Lola’s pity was not wholly lost. The great reptile rejected the offering that fate had put in its way. Stretching out its head on the rock, and whipping the last yards of its tail out of the water, it curled up in the sun, neck and tail forming a circle. Within the hollow of its shoulder Lola stood motionless.

  When the thing came out of the water, the men and the boy on the Erreguiña cried out in horror as if they had had a single voice between them. Then Olazábal pulled himself together.

  “Stop the engines!” he ordered. “Keep still, all of you!”

  Erreguiña drifted up to Offering Key, gradually losing way. There was not a sound on board her that might startle the beast.

  “She’s not afraid,” whispered Olazábal through his teeth. “The little splendid one! Caray! Do even the sea beasts recognise the best blood in Spain?”

  “She—she’s talking to it,” said Dick.

  As a matter of fact Lola had not opened her mouth, but Dick felt the strange and subtle communication between her and the beast.

  The boat slid alongside. Lola saw Olazábal motion to her to be still, putting his finger on his lips. She had no intention of moving. She had not moved a step since the thing rose from the sea.

  The crew stood still—wooden men on a silent ship. Their dark eyes glanced up at Olazábal expectantly. They knew he had bombs within reach of his hand, and for the moment could not see why he did not use them. But the captain from his point of vantage on the bridge could see the utter hopelessness of Lola’s situation. He dared not throw; the risk that the blast would annihilate Lola was too great. And even if he could so place a bomb that the whole thickness of the barrel-shaped body was between her and the explosion, it might not instantly be fatal, and in the death struggles of the reptile the little orange figure would be swept up and crushed.

  Erreguiña, now without steerage way, rolled gently in the calm water. Her side crunched against the sheer edge of Offering Key, and at the sound the muscles stirred along the flank of the beast, and its tail started to lash ponderously from side to side. Then the appalling scream began; the soundless vibration which gathered force until at last it came to the ears as a shattering siren shriek. The crew of the Erreguiña, who had never heard the call of the great lizard before, put their hands over their ears and prayed to all their saints to stop it. But on Dick it acted like a battle cry, breaking the spell of blank horror which held him.

  Before Olazábal could prevent him, he jumped on to the rail and sprang like a cat across the strip of water. He landed with his toes on the edge of the rock, took two headlong steps, and hurdled the prostrate neck to land at Lola’s side. He grabbed her round the waist and heaved with a strength far beyond his years. She was swung clear over the neck and let go with a shove that sent her stumbling into the sea. At the same instant the beast, now thoroughly aroused, heaved its whole weight upwards. Dick, utterly spent by his supreme effort and still lying across the neck, was tossed into the air. He came down on the smooth, slippery back, clawing desperately for a handhold. He found one—a red, gaping hole with a segment of steel inside it—and checked his fall just enough to make certain that it would end in the sea, not underneath the furious tail. He plunged in a fathom in front of the Erreguiña, which was slowly backing away from the rock. Lola was treading water a few yards away from him.

  Olazábal’s first act when he saw Lola fall clear was to start his engines and get steerage way on the Erreguiña lest the girl should be crushed between the rock and the side of the boat. He worked his ship away, stern foremost, with delicate seamanship, concentrating on his task as if there were no scream in his ears and no huge shadow across his deck. By the time that Dick too hit the friendly sea, the Erreguiña was her own length from the Key and manageable.

  Then Olazábal looked up. The reptile was poised high on its flippers. It had chosen the Erreguiña as its enemy, and paid no attention to the two small bodies swimming fast around the bows to safety. Its head darted back and forth like a piston. The pulp between its eyes glistened and flashed in the sun. Olazábal swiftly glanced at Dick and Lola, and saw that in another instant they would be under cover of the ship’s side. He pulled the wire of a bomb. The crew dropped flat behind the bulwarks.

  “From the San José—take it!” he roared.

  There was no curve to the path of that bomb. From the moment it left Olazábal’s hand there was never a doubt where it was aimed nor where it would strike. It spun across the water straight, hard, and low, and smashed into the jelly on the reptile’s forehead. The world roared wide open. Unmoved by the rain of living tissue, metal, and bone which drove past him, Olazábal stood with his arm still outstretched, peering through the fumes to see what was left of his target. He alone saw the end. There was no longer a head; only tassels of flesh hanging from the giant neck. The beast plunged sullenly forwards into the water. He saw its shadow pass under the Erreguiña, and wriggle away. Like a worm whose head has been cut off, the hulk of the reptile still lived. Its brain was very small and unimportant compared to the great nerve centres along the spine. Those nerve centres could still order the headless beast to move its flippers and to swim into deep water, where death would slowly overtake them, one after another, in the darkness.

  As soon as the crew had hauled Lola and Dick out of the water, the boy felt himself overwhelmed by weariness. The enthusiastic voices around him blurred into a murmur of which he understood nothing. The strong, gentle hands that supported him seemed to belong to thousands of men instead of a few. Then the tall figure of Olazábal loomed up before his eyes. So real and solid was it that he was swept back into full consciousness.

  “How’s Lola?” he asked.

  “Lying down in my cabin,” said Olazábal. “She’s not hurt. You come along too!”

  “I will,” Dick answered. “But wait a minute. I’ve got to be sick.”

  He tottered away from the captain, and sick he was as many a hero has been before him. Several of the crew followed him, anxious to be of assistance.

  “Leave him alone,” said Olazábal. “He must have it out by himself. I remember once falling down the chute of a canning factory, and I’d have come out as a dozen boxes of sardines, complete with label and tin-opener, if Captain Allarte hadn’t dived in after me and pulled me clear. He wasn’t hurt—nor was I—but he made straight for the nearest corner and was as ill as Ricardito there. And when I tried to help him, he stopped just long enough to tell me to mind my own misbegotten business!”

  The captain waited until the exhausted Dick had finished, and then picked him up in his arms and carried him to the after cabin. By the time he had got there, Dick was fast asleep.

  “Very good!” said Olazábal approvingly. “That boy is just naturally made for danger. First he gets the shock out of his system, and then he sleeps off the bad effects. No more nerves than a wild-cat!”

  He swung himself up to the bridge, and piloted the Erreguiña around the Key and into the Villadonga river. The fields on both banks were deserted. In the long shadows of the trees the cows lay chewing the cud, their heads turned away from the setting sun. A fishing boat was dropping down the second reach of the river on the tide. Its idle sail showed white across the meadows. As the Erreguiña rippled round the bend, the occupants of the boat stood up and waved excitedly. One of them was Paca, and the other the local innkeeper.

  “What happened?” shouted the innkeeper.

  “Nothing, man! Nothing!” answered Olazabal.
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  “I heard you playing hymns on that siren of yours,” said the innkeeper, “and then your boiler blew up!”

  “It’s still here,” the captain replied. “Come aboard and see!”

  He threw them a line and took the boat in tow. Paca, who up to that moment had not said a word, hauled herself up the Erreguiña’s side with surprising agility.

  “Where’s Ricardito?” she asked passionately.

  “Down below, woman,” said Olazábal. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong, he asks! Standing there with a face as pale as a new born babe’s! What’s wrong indeed—with shrieks and explosions enough to fetch King Felipe Segundo out of his grave!”

  “Well,” said the captain, “you two seem to be the only ones who heard anything.”

  “Ca! We’re the only ones who were anxious,” answered Paca.

  “Aye—you’ve guessed enough to be listening. But how about that fat wineskin there? What makes him think of us as soon as he hears a bang?”

  “Man! It’s that you owe me a lot of money!” said the innkeeper.

  Olazábal roared with laughter.

  “Ho!” he said. “Love and money! Love and money! Nothing like them for sharpening the ears!”

  “Stop your foolishness!” blazed Paca. “Tell me what happened!”

  Olazábal told her enough to send her flying to Lola’s side. Paca was a splendid comforter. When she entered the cabin, it seemed to Lola that all the simple, hearty life of Villadonga—the earth, the firesides, the nets, and the farms—had burst in with her. Horror could not endure among such familiar things.

  They tied up to the quay amid little curiosity. But as soon as Olazábal carried Dick ashore, still sleeping and in his blood-stained rags, the cottages gave up their inhabitants and the quayside hummed with questions.

  “Patience!” ordered Olazábal. “It’s a long story and you’ll hear it many times.”

  He hooked the postmaster out of the crowd with his spare arm.

  “You,” he said, “wire to Llanes for a doctor! Tell him to come prepared for a compound fracture of the arm with all possible complications. And we’ll want him to stay here a few days.”

  “Who’s hurt?” asked Lola and Paca simultaneously.

  “Don Ramon and Pablo. Will you make up beds for them, Paca? Get some of the women to help you.”

  “They must come to our house,” declared Lola. “Then mother and I can nurse them.”

  “You’ll want nursing yourself, my dear,” Olazábal replied.

  “No, I won’t. Not if I’ve got them to look after,” said Lola positively.

  She ran up the street to her mother’s house, the blanket in which she was draped floating out behind her, and her swimming suit glittering like gold tissue in the last rays of the sun.

  Meanwhile the oxen were slowly plodding home with their freight. Father Juan strolled ahead of them in the manner born, hooting and brandishing a stick. Hal sat in the hay between Echegaray, who was delirious and muttering to himself in Basque, and Pablo, protecting them from the worst of the jolts. At intervals Pablo and Hal would curse the slow pace of the oxen, and try to reconstruct from the beast’s scream and the explosion what had been happening off the coast. Father Juan had gone up to the top of the cliffs to report, but by the time he got there the Erreguiña had rounded Offering Key and was out of sight. For all they knew, she might have gone to the bottom.

  At last they came within sight of the river. There was the Erreguiña at her berth, and groups of blue-shirted men eddying and shifting over the quayside. They saw Olazábal with Dick in his arms, and for one terrible moment Hal thought his brother was dead. But the stirrings of the crowd dispelled his fears. They were not the slow and reverent movements with which men acknowledge the presence of death, but rapid and excited.

  As soon as Olazábal saw them approaching the bridge, he put them out of doubt in four words.

  “Beast dead! All safe!” he roared.

  The blast of his voice, pitched to carry half a mile, woke Dick up with a start. He slid to his feet and looked wonderingly over the village, the Erreguiña, and the cart lumbering across the bridge.

  “Gosh!” he said. “We’re all here!”

  The doctor from Llanes arrived in an hour, and ran his patients over on an improvised operating table that resembled a front-line casualty clearing station by the time he had finished. After an examination of Echegaray he sent at once for a specialist from Bilbao, who appeared two days later. Within a week Hal was back on his job, the broken rib rapidly knitting under its straps, and Dick and Pablo were limping about the village, enjoying a justifiable amount of hero-worship; but Don Ramon was still fighting for life.

  Everyone in the village visited the house of Ribadasella at least once a day, and stood outside whispering and tip-toeing, sniffing the waves of chloroform and antiseptics that mingled with the scents of the garden. Sometimes Doña Mariquita or Lola would come out for a breath of air, and answer questions in a low voice. Sometimes the doctors could be seen washing their hands, or talking together with serious faces. Almost every hour the postmaster delivered telegrams asking for news—many of them from Olazábal, who had been compelled to return to Zumaya.

  The doctors had told Echegaray that he must lose his arm—that any attempt to save it would be terribly dangerous. But the Basque would not be frightened, and ordered them to take the risk. They cut and set, drained and grafted until there was nothing left of Echegaray but the breath in his nostrils and a wasted body that barely curved the sheets of his bed. Twice the doctors gave up hope, and Father Juan held himself in readiness to administer the last rites. But Echegaray refused to die. In his lucid intervals he said as much. And so since he would not die he had to get well.

  There was wild rejoicing in the village when it was known that Don Ramon was definitely round the corner and calling for food. They came with their gifts as if it had been the christening of a Count of Ribadasella. Milk, eggs, joints of lamb, jars of wine, fruit, and flowers were deposited at Doña Mariquita’s doorstep by shy men and talkative women, none of whom would take a penny for their produce.

  Echegaray was very touched by their devotion.

  “You’d think by the way they treat me that I was the father of the whole village,” he said to Dick on the first day that he was allowed conversation.

  “Well,” Dick replied. “You see they’re awfully proud to have you here—and then they all love you.”

  “I don’t see why they should. I haven’t done anything for them.”

  “But people do love you,” said Dick shyly.

  “Are you one of people?” asked Echegaray.

  “Me? I’m just all the people together!” Dick answered.

  “That’s good,” said Don Ramon. “Because, Ricardito, I want you to be my heir.”

  “To the shipyard?” asked Dick.

  “To that—and to a lot of less material things which I think you’ll find quite as interesting. It will mean spending most of your life in Spain, Ricardito, and a lot of hard work.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Dick. “And perhaps we could start a branch in England some time.”

  Echegaray laughed.

  “I’ll send you to Southampton to learn some of their tricks of yacht building,” he said. “But that’s beside the point. I’m glad you’re willing, Ricardito, for I’ve set my heart on having you. I thought you might do, and took you with me in the boat to see how you’d behave in an emergency. You must forgive me for making you go through all those horrors. I didn’t think it would be such a test as it was.”

  “Forgive you?” exclaimed Dick. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!”

  “Well,” said Echegaray, “I’ll see if I can get your brother’s consent, and then we’ll celebrate. Send a wire to Olazábal and tell him that he and his bunch of pirates are invited to dinner two weeks from to-day.”

  “Two weeks from to-day!” Dick protested. “You won’t be up.” />
  “I will!” said Echegaray, “and walking, too!”

  Don Ramon kept his word. In two weeks he was just able to totter down to the quayside to greet the Erreguiña when she steamed up river with siren tooting and a string of flags flying, most of which had undoubtedly been cut from the tails of Olazábal’s more colourful shirts.

  The dinner was served in Hal’s house, for it had been agreed that Paca must cook it, and Paca refused to work outside her own kitchen on so great an occasion. Don Ramon, for once wearing a tie, Doña Mariquita, and Hal sat at one end of the massive table; Dick, Lola, and Olazábal at the other. Pablo and the crew of the Erreguiña occupied the middle, with Father Juan amongst them to act as a restraining influence in case their flights of fancy became too profane. The postmaster, the innkeeper, and the Llanes doctor were there—the latter in a festive mood, for Echegaray had sworn that he knew just as much as the specialist, and had insisted on paying him the same fee. An empty place stood ready for Paca to slip into, as soon as she had passed the last course into the hands of her helpers.

  When the main business of eating was over, and the champing of powerful jaws had given way to a roar of noise and laughter, Echegaray stood up.

  “Condesa de Ribadasella,” he said, “Doña Mariquita, and gentlemen! I dedicate this cup to the bravest act I ever heard of! And I’ve heard of some remarkable ones! To Ricardito’s rescue of—shall I say?—his lady in distress!”

  They drank. The room shook with the wild cheers of Olazábal’s crew. There was no holding them. They looked prepared to go on expressing their admiration of Dick till midnight. Indeed, they would have done so, had they not become suddenly abashed by the presence of Doña Mariquita, and sat down instantly and in a body.

  The unexpected collapse of the crew left Pablo still on his feet. He had been shouting a toast of his own, under cover of the general noise, and now found himself announcing in a dead silence: