The floor sloped a little downward. I felt
my way with my feet, and came to a step--another. I was going
along a descending passage, cut at its steepest into rough,
irregular stairs. With either hand I could touch the walls. All
the while the light grew clearer. Presently, by another sharp
turn, I found myself in a cave, some thirty feet in depth by
eighteen across, with an opening on the narrow strip of beach I had
seen from the top of the cliffs.
The roof is high, with an effect of Gothic arches. Near the mouth
is a tiny spring of ice-cold water, which has worn a clean
rock-channel for itself to the sea. Otherwise the cave is
perfectly dry. The shining white sand of its floor is above the
highest watermark on the cliffs outside. There is no doubt in my
mind that in the great buccaneering days of the seventeenth
century, and probably much later, the place was the haunt of
pirates. One fancies that Captain Sampson of the _Bonny Lass_ may
have known of it before he brought the treasure to the island.
There were queer folk to be met with in those days in the Western
Ocean! The cave is cool at blazing midday, and secret, I fancy,
even from the sea, because of the droop of great rock-eaves above
its mouth. Either for the keeping of stores or as a hiding-place
for men or treasure it would be admirable. Yes, the cave has seen
many a fierce, sea-tanned face and tarry pigtail, and echoed to
strange oaths and wild sea-songs.
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