The other man looked like an ordinary fisherman, but wore something that fishermen rarely worea pair of spectacles! They looked odd on his extremely brown face.
The men sat on boxes, talking. Tom could not hear what they were saying. He stared round the cave, astonished, for the sides of it were piled with wooden boxes and crates. Tom couldn’t imagine what was in them. This was clearly a store-house of some kind. But why? And where did all the boxes come from?
There was a rough mattress in one corner of the cave. One or both men slept there, then. What a curious place to live in! Tom was completely puzzled by it all. But he did feel certain of one thingthat these men would not welcome his presence there at all! Whatever they were doing was something secret and private, something they wanted to be kept hidden.
“I daren’t go in and ask them for help,” thought the boy desperately. “I simply daren’t. I hate the look of that man with the hairy legs. He looks as if he’d think as little of hurling me down the cliff, as of dropping and smashing those birds’ eggs!”
He strained his ears to hear what they were saying. But he couldn’t make out a word. Perhaps they were talking in some foreign language. Certainly the man in the fisherman’s clothes, the one wearing glasses, looked like a foreigner. It was all most extraordinary.
Tom wondered if he could possibly be in some sort of very real dream. Then he got another whiff of tobacco smoke and knew he wasn’t. Things never smelt as strong as that in dreams!
One of the men looked at his watch. He got up and jerked his head at the other. They made their way to a hole in the ground that Tom could not see clearly from where he stood, and seemed to drop right down. At any rate, they completely disappeared!
Tom waited a few moments and then cautiously crossed the floor of the cave and looked down the hole. There was nothing to be seen. The men had gone. Tom didn’t feel at all inclined to follow them. For one thing he couldn’t see how to get down the hole! There were no steps or footholds of any sort that he could see!
He looked round the cave. He could hardly see its walls, they were stacked so high with boxes of all sizes. What could be inside them?
The men had left a lantern burning on a box in the middle of the cave. Did that mean they were soon coming back? Perhaps it did. Tom felt that it would be a good thing if he were not there when they returned.
But where could he go? He stood still in the cave, thinkingand as he stood there, he heard a muffled sound. It seemed to come from somewhere to the left of the big cave.
“It’s a kind of rushing watery sound,” thought Tom. “Whatever can it be?”
There was a big stack of boxes on the left of the cave. Tom went to them, and saw the wall of the cave behind them. There was a hole in the wall, almost round, just about as high as Tom’s waist. The rushing noise came from there.
Tom poked his head through the hole. He switched his torch onand saw a strange sight. An underground river flowed there, swift and rushing!
“Whythat must be the river that comes out at the foot of the cliff,” thought Tom. “Gollyif I could follow it, I’d soon be out of here!”
He stood and gazed at the swiftly-flowing river by the light of his torch. The dark, strong torrent moved quickly. Tom wondered how far from the foot of the cliff it was. After all, the winding, twisting tunnel he had followed had come down and down and downmaybe he was almost level with the base of the cliff now, and this river would take him very quickly to the shallow bay outside, and the sunshine.
He went back into the lamp-lit cave and looked round. He hoped that he might see another torch that he could take with him. He felt sure his own would not last much longer! He didn’t want to face another long journey without being sure he had plenty of light for it!
Before he could see anything in the shape of a torch, something startling happened. There came the sound of someone scrambling up the hole in the cave floor, down which the men had goneand, before Tom’s alarmed eyes, the big, bearded face of the man with the hairy legs popped up out of the hole!
Tom stared at him, petrifiedand he stared back at Tom as if he really couldn’t believe his eyes. A boy! A boy in his cave! Could he be dreaming?
Tom swallowed hard, and tried to say something, but he couldn’t think what to say. The bearded face just above the hole opened its eyes wide, and then the mouth opened too, and a bellow came out.
“What you doing here?”
Tom couldn’t move. His feet seemed to be growing into the ground. He watched the stumpy, short-necked man heave himself out of the hole and come towards him. He was frightened, and backed away, suddenly finding himself able to move.
He backed straight into the box on which the lamp was set. The box went over and the lamp with it. It smashed at once, flared up, and then went out. The cave was instantly in black darkness.
The bearded man began to mutter something and to feel about as if he were looking for another lamp or a candle. Tom knew that this was his only chance of escape. He ran softly behind the pile of boxes to the hole in the wall that looked out on to the underground river.
He was through the hole in a trice. He had hoped there would be a ledge there, or a rock of some kind he could hold to, whilst he flashed his torch round to see what kind of a way of escape he had chosen. But there was no rock and no ledgeonly the cold, rushing river!
Tom landed in the water with a splash. He caught his breath with the coldness of it. Then he began to strike out with all his might, fearing that the bearded man might come after him.
The current of the swiftly-flowing river bore him away rapidly. Tom let himself be taken along, keeping himself afloat quite easily, but shivering with the cold. He thought of his torch gloomily. It was in his pocket, but not wrapped up in the oilskin. It would be of no use at all now. H this underground river landed him somewhere inside the cliff again, he would be in complete darkness.
“Lost for ever!” said Tom dolefully. “Oh why did I disobey Andy? I’ll never get out of this mess, never! Golly, how cold the water is!”
The river bore him along, gurgling in a deep voice as it went. It apparently ran in a deep channel of rock. Tom could not see if they were passing through caves or not, nor could he see if there were any banks of rock or sand to the river. He just had to go on with it, trying to keep his balance and not be rolled over and over like a log of wood. Once his foot struck against a jutting rock, and it was badly bruised. But there was no one to hear his cry. He bit his lip with the pain, and after that was very much afraid of being bumped against a rock again.
He grew very tired and cold. And then, just as he felt he really could not go on one moment longer, he saw a bright light in front of him, a big wide, dazzling patch of light that filled him with joy.
“Sunshine!” said Tom. “That’s sunshine! I must be getting near the place where the river rushes out of the cliff. I’ve escaped!”
Yesit was sunshine! Hurrah! Tom suddenly felt so weak with relief that he couldn’t seem to keep his balance any more, and the current took him and rolled him over and over. He gasped and spluttered, striking out as best he could to hold his face and shoulders out of the swift-running water.
He was taken to where sea and river met. A big wave ran up and caught him as the river took him there. Luckily for him he was thrown sideways on to a rock, and managed to pull himself up out of reach of the water.
He couldn’t move. He lay there on his back, gasping for breath, shivering and trembling, whilst just below him river and sea fought their eternal battle, as one met the other, sending up spray and foam that fell pattering down on poor tired-out Tom.