She heard another yell, sounding rather muffled and distant. She went to the back of the cave and discovered the hidden space. She fetched another torch from the ledge and shone it up and down. She stared in amazement when she saw two shoes sticking out of a round hole about as high as her shoulder.
She tugged at Lucy-Ann’s ankles and yelled at her. “Lucy-Ann! What do you think you’re doing? Where are you going? What’s up that hole?”
Lucy-Ann yelled back. “I don’t know, Dinah. I found it by accident. I think Kiki must have gone up it. Shall I go up and see if I can find her? You come too.”
“All right,” called Dinah. “Go on up.”
Lucy-Ann wriggled further up the narrow pipe-like tunnel. It suddenly widened out, and by the light of her torch she saw below her another cave — but a vast one this time.
She managed to get out of the hole, and had a look round at the cave. It was more like an underground hall. Its roof was very high indeed. From somewhere in its dim vastness came a mournful voice.
“What a pity, what a pity!”
“Kiki! So you are here!” cried Lucy-Ann, and then listened in astonishment to the echo that sounded immediately. “Here, here, here, are here, are here!” cried the echoes, repeating themselves in a weird and strange manner.
“Hurry up, Dinah!” called Lucy-Ann, not liking the echoes at all.
“Up, Dinah, Dinah, Dinah!” called the echoes at once. Kiki flew over to Lucy-Ann, frightened. So many voices! Whatever could they all be?
“Poor Kiki!” said the parrot, in a fright. “Poor Kiki!”
“Kiki, Kiki, Kiki!” called the echoes. The parrot shivered and gazed all round, trying to see who called her. She suddenly gave a loud and defiant squawk.
At once a score of squawks sounded all round, as if the cave was filled with hundreds of parrots. Kiki was simply astounded. Could there be so many birds there that she couldn’t see?
Dinah crawled out of the hole and stood by Lucy-Ann. “What an enormous place!” she said.
“Place!” shouted the echoes.
“Everything we say is repeated,” said Lucy-Ann. “It’s weird.”
“Weird, it’s weird,” said the echoes.
“Well, let’s whisper, then,” said Dinah, whispering herself. The cave was at once filled with mysterious whispers, which scared the girls even more than the repeated shouts they had heard. They clutched one another. Then Dinah recovered herself.
“It’s only the echoes,” she said. “You often get them in enormous caves like this. I wonder if anyone has ever been here before.”
“Never, I should think,” said Lucy-Ann, flashing her torch all round. “Fancy! We may be treading in a place that no one else has ever trodden in before!”
“Let’s explore the cave a bit,” said Dinah. “Not that there seems much to see, but we might as well do something whilst we’re waiting for the boys.”
So they walked slowly round the great dark cave, their footsteps repeated a hundred times by the echoes. Once, when Dinah sneezed, the girls were really frightened by the enormous explosive noises that came from all round them. The echoes certainly enjoyed themselves then.
“Oh, don’t sneeze again, Dinah,” begged Lucy-Ann. “It’s really awful to hear the echoes sneezing. Worse than hearing them squawk like Kiki.”
They had gone almost all the way round the cave when they came to a passage leading out of it — a high, narrow passage, between two walls of rocks.
“Look at that!” said Dinah, surprised. “A passage! Do you suppose it leads anywhere?”
“It might,” said Lucy-Ann, and her eyes gleamed. “Don’t forget, Dinah, that those men are after treasure. We don’t know what kind — but it’s just possible it might be hidden somewhere in these mountains.”
“Let’s follow the passage, then,” said Dinah. “Kiki! Come along. We don’t want to leave you behind.”
Kiki flew to her shoulder. In silence the two girls entered the narrow, rocky passage, their torches gleaming in front of them. What were they going to find?
Chapter 12
BEHIND THE WATERFALL
THE passage was a very winding one. It led a little downwards, and the floor was very uneven to the feet. The girls tripped and stumbled very often. Once the roof came down so low that they had to crawl under it. But it grew high again almost at once.
After a while they heard a noise. They couldn’t imagine what it was. It was a deep and continuous roar that never stopped even for a second.
“What’s that?” said Dinah. “Are we getting into the heart of the mountain, do you think, Lucy-Ann? That’s not the roar of a mighty fire, is it? What can it be? What is there that could make that noise in the middle of a mountain?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy-Ann, and immediately wanted to go back. A fire in the heart of a mountain, a fire that roared like that? She didn’t in the least want to see it. She felt hot and breathless at the thought.
But Dinah wasn’t going back now that they had come so far.
“What, go back before we’ve found out where this passage goes to?” she said. “Of course not! The boys would laugh like anything when we told them. We don’t often get the chance of discovering something before they do. Why, we might even happen on the treasure, whatever it is, Lucy-Ann.”
Lucy-Ann felt that she didn’t care in the least about treasure. All she wanted was to get back to the safety of the cave she knew, the cave with the green fern-curtains.
“Well, you go back, then,” said Dinah unkindly. “I’m going on. Baby!”
It was more frightening to think of going back to the cave of echoes by herself than to go on with Dinah. So poor Lucy-Ann chose unwillingly to go on. With that queer, muffled roar in her ears she pressed on down the winding passage, keeping close to Dinah. The roar became louder.
And then the girls knew what it was. It was the waterfall, of course! How stupid of them not to think of that! But it sounded so different there in the mountain.
“We’re not going into the heart of the mountain after all,” said Dinah. “We’re coming out somewhere near the waterfall. I wonder where.”
They got a tremendous surprise when they did see daylight. The passage suddenly took one last turn and took them into subdued daylight, that flickered and shone round them in a curious way. A draught of cold air met them, and something wetted their hair.
“Lucy-Ann! We’ve come out on to a flat ledge just behind the waterfall!” cried Dinah in astonishment. “Look, there’s the great mass of falling water just in front of us! — oh, the colours in it! Can you hear me? The water is making such a noise.”
Overwhelmed by surprise and by the noise, Lucy-Ann stood and stared. The water made a great rushing curtain between them and the open air. It poured down, shining and exultant, never stopping. The power behind it awed the two girls. They felt very small and feeble when they watched that great volume of water pouring down a few feet in front of them.
It was amazing to be able to stand on a ledge just behind the waterfall and yet not to be affected by it in any way except to feel the fine spray misting the air. The ledge was very wide, and ran the whole width of the fall. There was a rock about a foot high at one end of the ledge, and the girls sat down on it to watch the amazing sight in front of them.
“What will the boys say?” wondered Dinah. “Let’s stay here till we see them coming back. If we sit on this rock, just at the edge of the waterfall, we can wave to them. They will be so astonished to see us here. There’s no way of getting to this ledge from above or below, only from behind, from the passage we found.”
“Yes. We’ll surprise the boys,” said Lucy-Ann, no longer frightened. “Look, we can see our cave up there! — at least, we can see the giant fern whose fronds are hiding it. We shall easily be able to see the boys when they come back.”
Kiki was very quiet indeed. She had been surprised to come out behind the great wall of water. She sat on a ledge and watched it, blinking every now and again.
“I hope she won’t be silly enough to try and fly through the waterfall,” said Lucy-Ann anxiously. “She would be taken down with it and dashed to pieces. I know she would.”
“She won’t do anything so silly,” said Dinah. “She’s wise enough to know what would happen if she tried something like that. She may fly out round the edge of the waterfall, though. Still, there shouldn’t be much danger for her in that.”