Highway Pirates; or, The Secret Place at Coverthorne

A part of the passage had evidently been cut through the solid rock, but farther along the roof was of earth, and had been propped up with wooden supports. It was owing to the fact that some of these, no doubt rotten with age, had given way, that the fall had occurred which formed the block against which we had been brought up short. We at once proceeded to examine this obstruction, and had hardly turned our light upon it before we made an important discovery. The fall had not been of sufficient volume to quite block the tunnel; there was a narrow opening still at the top of the heap of débris, but not wide enough, as we could see at a glance, to admit of the passage of a human being.

"Hurrah!" cried the guard. "D'you see that, sir? We'll soon scratch a hole there big enough to crawl through, or my name ain't George Woodley."

"I'm afraid if you do it won't be much good," I answered. "If the roof has fallen here, it's almost sure to have fallen again further on in several places, before the tunnel comes to the surface. This shows that no one has been along it for some time."

We turned away, and examined the rest of the passage as far as the top of the shaft; but only one thing did we find, and that was an empty bottle stowed away in a hole in the rock. It was a queer, misshapen old thing, which had, perhaps, held good liquor in its time, but evidently belonged to a by-gone age. Worthless as it might have appeared under ordinary circumstances, to us it proved a valuable find; and George offered at once to go down and fill it with water from the cave below. The discovery and the suggestion were both made none too soon. Another half-hour and it would have been impossible, for both wind and tide were rising; the big waves were already breaking into the entrance of the cavern with a booming roar, and the boiling surf swept clean over the platform just as George was re-ascending the rope.

I was a strong, healthy boy, but the long hours of cold, terror, and semi-starvation were beginning to tell. I felt weak and feverish, my skin was dry and parched, yet the chill from my sodden clothes seemed still to strike right through into my very bones. With the aid of his knife George fashioned the fragment of plank into something resembling a short spade; then scrambling up the bank of earth, he began to dig with the intention of enlarging the existing hole till it should be big enough for us to crawl through. With burning eyes and chattering teeth I stood below, and assisted as best I could by dragging away the loose earth with my hands. What with my deafness, and with the roar of the sea in the cavern below, I could not hear a word he said, though he did not waste much time in talking.

Our fate must have been decided long before this if we had not found means of ascending the shaft to our present position. The storm had increased in fury, and we could tell each time a big wave swept into the cavern, by the rush of air which came whistling up the shaft and swept in a briny blast along the passage. Suddenly George stopped working, and I saw the dark outline of his figure motionless in the feeble ray of the little lamp.

"What's the matter?" I cried.

He made no reply, but raised his hand as a person would in the act of listening. For half a minute he remained in that position, then resumed his digging. In a very short time, however, he stopped again, and after an instant's pause startled me by leaning forward and shouting at the top of his voice through the hole, —

"Hollo, there!"

Receiving apparently no reply to his hail, he turned and beckoned me to climb up by his side.

"Can you hear anything, Master Eden?" he asked.

I listened intently, but no sound caught my ear but the muffled surge and splash of the water in the cavern.

"There!" exclaimed my companion – "there again! Don't you hear it?"

Still to my dulled hearing no fresh sound was audible.

"What was it?" I asked.

Without answering my question, he once more roared, "Hollo, there!" through the widened hole, and remained with warning hand uplifted, as though expecting an answering shout. "Fancy, I suppose," he muttered at length. "Yet that blind fellow heard something of the sort too. Tut! I think I'm going queer in my head."

He went on digging, but once or twice I noticed that he paused in the same curious manner. I was too weary to pay much attention, but continued laboriously scooping and dragging the earth he loosened till my fingers seemed raw. At length Woodley stopped digging, and sat down for a rest. As he moved the lamp the dim oil flame gave me a momentary glimpse of his face, and on it I thought I detected a queer expression which I had never noticed there before.

For ten minutes, perhaps, he sat regaining his breath, and saying nothing; then turning to me he asked abruptly, —

"Master Eden, do you believe there's such things as ghosts?"

"No," I answered blankly, astonished at the question. A terrible thought flashed through my mind that, as a last crowning horror, Woodley was actually going out of his mind. "No," I repeated in a faltering tone, "I don't believe in ghosts."

"Neither do I, then," said George; and picking up his wooden spade, he went on digging.

CHAPTER XVII.

DAYLIGHT AT LAST

How that night passed, or whether it was night or day, I cannot say. Worn out, I must have fallen asleep over my work; and when I awoke, George was shaking my arm and informing me that he had crawled through the hole and found the passage free on the other side. I seemed to be burning hot now; there was a singing in my head, and as I rose to my feet I staggered and almost fell. How many hours George had been at work I had no idea. My notions of time were getting hazy and uncertain; I felt that we had lived in that dark, windy passage for ages.

The hole had been enlarged just sufficiently to admit of our crawling through. The fall of earth did not extend many yards, and beyond it we found ourselves in the continuation of the tunnel. On, on, on we went, moving slowly, with only the uncertain light of the tiny lamp to warn us of any dangerous pitfall which might lie in our path. Contrary to my expectation, we encountered no further obstacle of a similar kind to that through which we had just cut our way. Now we were passing once more through solid rock, and now the tunnel was continued through earth, supported by rough-hewn beams, black with damp and age. Owing to our slow progress, the distance seemed much longer than it no doubt really was; the path sloped upward with a gentle gradient all the way, and so long did the ascent appear that at almost every step I wondered that we did not arrive at the surface of the ground on a level with the top of the cliffs. The passage made no turns, and we were evidently striking straight inland. The air still kept fresh, and even at this distance from the cave we could feel the upward blast of air as the big seas entered the cavern.

I staggered along like one in a dream, sometimes steadying myself with my hands as I lurched up against rock or beam; then all at once George, who was going on a pace or two in front, started back so quickly that he trod on my toes, and nearly knocked me down. At the same moment the lamp fell from his hand, and we were once more in a darkness that could be felt.

I heard it myself that time! Out of the inky blackness, from the direction in which we were going, there came a most unearthly sound, half human, half the note of some strange instrument made and played upon by underground goblins of old country folk's tales. It rose to almost a shriek at its loudest pitch, and then died away into a sort of crooning growl. So weird and terrifying was it in that subterranean region, that, though past caring for most things, whether good or ill, I felt the hair bristle on my head.

Woodley was a brave man, as I had reason to know, but I felt his arm shaking as I clutched it with my hand.

"Hullo! – hullo, there!" he cried, in a hoarse, quavering voice which no friend of his could have recognized. "Who are you, and what are you doing?"

Once more there was no reply. Another few moments of that suspense, and I verily believe I should have turned and rushed back along the way we had come, regardless whether I ended up by pitching head first down the shaft into the cavern beneath. Fortunately, George possessed a large stock of that dogged resolution peculiar to a Briton, which desperate circumstances tend only to harden; and now, recovering from the shock which the sound had given him, I believe he was ready to deal with a whole churchyardful of ghosts.

"Strike a light, Master Eden," he said shortly, "and I'll find the lamp."

Owing partly to the fright, and partly to my dazed condition, I struck a good many blows with the steel before I had a spark glowing in the tinder. In the meantime Woodley had recovered the lamp, and replenished the oil which had been spilt by pouring out a fresh supply from the bottle in his pocket. Just as we got the wick to burn, another weird, high-pitched howl rang through the darkness, continued for perhaps half a minute, and then ceased; but this time George remained undaunted.

"You carry the lamp, sir," he said. "Hold it well up, and I'll go in front."

He took something from his pocket, and I knew from the sharp click that he had cocked the pistol.

What we expected to see it would be hard to say. Certainly not the obstacle which, a few paces further on, we found blocking our path. This was nothing more or less than a heavy wooden door, dark with age like the beams of the tunnel, and studded with rusty iron nails. We stopped, and stood staring at it in the faint glimmer of our feeble lamp. What, then, could have become of the creature – goblin or human – that had terrified us with its unearthly music? Could it have retreated before our advance, and be now lying in wait for us behind that mass of ancient timber?

Woodley was the first to move. He walked up to the door, tried it with his shoulder, and finding it fast, rapped on it with his knuckles, as though he expected some ghostly porter to answer his summons.

Again we stood, waiting and listening; then, just as I was about to speak, a gust of air came sweeping down the passage, causing our lamp to flicker, and the ghostly music burst out again close to where we stood, as though the goblin minstrel were piping defiance at us from the farther side of the door. I grabbed Woodley by the arm; but to my surprise the man burst into a roar of laughter, which mingled strangely with the weird howl that rose and fell in total disregard of this audacious interruption.

"Ho, ho!" laughed George. "To think that we should have been scared by that! Bless me, nothing but the wind blowing through a keyhole!"

A moment's examination proved his statement to be correct. The gusts of air driven along the tunnel transformed the wide, old-fashioned keyhole into a sort of musical instrument; something in the formation of the lock must, I think, have lent itself to producing an unusually strange effect as the wind hummed and whistled through the hole. Here, at all events, was an explanation to the mystery; but in my case the sudden relaxing of overstrung nerves made me little inclined to join in my companion's laugh. I leaned up against the side of the passage, gasping for breath, while the throbbing of my heart seemed to hammer through my whole frame.

By the time I had somewhat recovered from the reaction caused by our discovery, George had carefully examined the door. It was fast and firm as a rock, though on one side, where the ponderous framework seemed to have shrunk or sunk, there were chinks into which I could have inserted the end of my finger; through these, too, the stronger gusts of air sighed and hummed as though in accompaniment to the whoop and wail of the keyhole.

"It's the lock that holds it," said George, returning to my hands the lamp which he had borrowed to aid him in his investigations. "If we could find one of these beams or uprights loose, and use it as a battering-ram, we might soon burst it open."

What the object of a door in such a place could be we had no notion, nor, I believe, did we trouble to think. What concerned us was that it stood between us and our hopes of liberty; and having no tool with which to pick the lock, we must employ our remaining strength in an attempt to make it yield to force.

To this end we retraced our steps some distance along the passage; but the heavy blocks of timber were too firmly fixed to admit of our wrenching them from their places. In vain did we search for a lump of rock sufficiently large and heavy to answer the same purpose; the only loose piece we could find was about the size of a man's boot, and we might have continued to fling this at the door for a whole week without achieving any further result than dinting the oak.

"Master Eden," said George, turning to me as though a sudden thought had come into his mind, "I've got a key here I fancy will fit that lock," and he made a sign indicating the pistol in his hand. "I've heard of its being done," he continued, "and I don't see why it shouldn't act in this case. I'll extract the ball, put the end of the muzzle to the keyhole, and blow the lock clean off the inside of the door. The powder's dry, and I don't doubt but what it'll explode."

"You'll hurt your hand," I said.

"I'll chance that," he replied. "I'll use my left. Now, sir, you hold the lamp, and stand clear when I fire."

With the corkscrew belonging to his knife Woodley was able to draw the wad from the short-barrelled pistol, and so remove the ball; then standing at arm's-length from the door, he took the weapon in his left hand and signalled to me to go farther back. The next instant there was a blinding flash, and a report which, in that confined space, sounded like the discharge of a small cannon. Woodley staggered back, and his arm dropped to his side. It was not for some moments that I was able to ascertain whether or not he was seriously injured; then it turned out that the recoil of the firearm, discharged with its muzzle so close to the door, had dislocated his wrist.

We pressed forward through the cloud of pungent smoke, and to our delight found that the door was no longer able to resist our united efforts to shove it open; indeed, when we had time to examine it more closely, we found that the lock had been blown away on the inside. We crossed the threshold eagerly enough, but the next moment whatever hopes had risen in our minds of finding ourselves on the point of stepping out into the blessed fresh air and light of day were dashed to the ground. We had certainly arrived at the end of our journey, but only to find that the long tunnel had apparently no outlet, and terminated in a small underground cell, of which the walls and roof even were of stone. As the dim light of our lamp revealed this unwelcome truth, I felt that at last our fate was finally sealed, that I could make no further effort, and that here I must lie down and die. Listlessly I stood by George's side and looked round. The little chamber in which we stood was the same height as the tunnel, and, I should say, as regards length and breadth not more than five feet square. It contained nothing but a three-legged wooden stool, and an ancient box or coffer, apparently of iron, secured with a heavy padlock. The walls, as I have said, were of roughly-hewn stone, and the roof was formed of two slabs of granite. Dimly I wondered to what purpose such a place could ever have been put – whether some hermit had dwelt there in a bygone age, and why such a long tunnel had been excavated for no further purpose than to end in a tiny vault which seemingly, to all intents and purposes, might have been constructed immediately above the cave. These thoughts drifted languidly through my fevered brain; the reaction after a brief period of excitement was beginning to tell, and I was fast coming to the end of my powers of endurance.

"What's this, I wonder?" exclaimed George, giving the iron box a kick. "Some old pirate's treasure, maybe. Well, if 'twas full of gold it's no good to us at present, nor likely to be unless we can find a way out of this vault. Set down the light a moment, Master Eden," he continued. "I'll hoist you up on my back, sir, and you can see if you can stir either of them stone slabs overhead."

Feeble as I was, I doubt whether I could have moved the stone if it had offered no other resistance than its own weight; as it was, for all the effect my pushing had there might have been ten thousand tons of earth resting on its upper surface. As Woodley once more set me on my feet I turned giddy, and sank down on the iron box to save myself from falling. The dimly-lit vault spun round and round; I leaned my head against the cold stone and closed my eyes. Whether I fainted or merely dozed off from sheer exhaustion I can't say, but after what seemed an age I was roused by Woodley shaking my shoulder and addressing me in loud and excited tones. His words had to be repeated several times before I grasped their meaning; then at last they forced themselves into my brain.

"Master Eden, I've heard a dog barking! There 'tis again! Liven up, sir; we can't be far from help."

For a moment I seemed to recover full possession of my senses; my brain was feverishly active as a sudden inspiration came to my mind – the weird song of the wind through the keyhole, the long uphill slope of the passage, the barking of the dog.

"George," I cried, "I know where we are! We're in the secret place at Coverthorne! We must be close to the haunted room, perhaps directly under it; and the wind was the ghost!" I broke out into a fit of wild hysterical laughter, and ended by bursting into tears.

"Steady, steady, sir," cried George. "What d'you mean? What are you talking about?"

With an effort recovering my self-possession, I told him in a few words what I meant, and how I believed we had unwittingly discovered the old house's secret chamber.

"But what can we do?" I exclaimed. "We may stay buried here for any length of time, and no one know where we are or how to get us out."

Woodley was certainly a man of quick resource. He stood thinking for a moment; then picking up the lamp, he carried it out into the tunnel, and returning closed the door. Standing in the pitch darkness, we saw for the first time a faint gray shadow as it were, but a few inches long, which filtered through between one granite slab and the end wall of the cell. Faint and indistinct it might be, but at the sight of it our hearts leaped within us: this was daylight at last!

"Hurrah!" shouted George. "Yonder's the way out? Now I'll soon have some one to open the door for us, or may I never ride behind four horses again!"

He brought back the lamp, and then commenced to yell at the top of his voice, varying this proceeding by hurling the wooden stool up against the slabs overhead, which, in spite of the injury to his left arm, he continued doing till every leg was smashed and only the seat remained.

"Yo-ho!" he shouted. "The dog's heard me; he's barking like mad. Yo-ho! help here – help!"

I made some feeble attempt to contribute to the uproar, but my voice seemed suddenly to have failed me, and my cheer was nothing but a croak. Strange noises were ringing in my ears, and a shower of sparks danced before my eyes.

How long this continued I could not have told, but at length there was a muffled, "Who are you down there?" and more shouting on the part of George. Then I became aware of the fact that Woodley was hugging me in his arms, laughing and crying, and assuring me that we were saved.

Straightway I found myself mounted with him on the back seat of a coach. We were tearing along at breakneck speed in the twilight of a winter afternoon; there was a great roaring in the air, which drowned even the rattle of the wheels, and looking round I was horrified to see following us a great onrushing wall of water, as though the sea had overflowed the land. Faster and faster became our wild gallop, but the huge line of breakers was gaining on us every moment; now we were overtaken, and a great wave was rearing its head above us to sweep us to destruction. I heard a muffled voice shout, "Stand from under!" There was a crash, a blaze of light, and I became unconscious.

Long after, whole centuries later it might have been, I became aware of the fact that I was staring upward at some oblong patch of light. Slowly this resolved itself into an opening in the roof of the passage, and I realized that two men and a boy were staring down at me in mute astonishment. Then, as my dizzy brain grew clear for a moment, I recognized the last named as Miles Coverthorne.

Once more the roar of a troubled sea was in my ears; I had a horrible idea that I had been thrust down into a vault and should be buried alive. I made one last frantic effort to retain my failing senses.

"Miles," I cried pitifully, "take me out! Don't let them bury me! I'm Sylvester Eden!"

I could not hear his reply, but saw him move his head and hand, and the next moment I had been whirled away once more into darkness beyond even the land of dreams.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FURTHER FIND

I awoke quite naturally, as though from a deep sleep, to find myself in bed, with Mrs. Coverthorne and a strange gentleman standing close by, looking down at me as I lay. I recognized the room, and had some hazy idea that this was a continuation of my summer holiday.

"Well?" said the gentleman, smiling; "feeling better after your nap?"

I felt too drowsy to reply, but languidly allowed the stranger to feel my pulse, which he did after lugging a huge watch out of his fob.

"Keep him snug in bed for a day or two," I heard him say, "and he'll be all right. Forty years ago I dare say I could have gone through it myself without much hurt. I'll make up something, and send it by the boy."

I was asleep again before they left the room, and did not wake till Mrs. Coverthorne roused me to take some beef tea. Slowly, as I swallowed the nourishment, I began to wonder why I was propped up in bed, being fed with a spoon in my old room at Coverthorne. Had I been ill? or had I met with an accident? What had Miles and I been doing? Then suddenly, like a landscape coming into view through a quickly-vanishing mist, the recollection of past events came flooding into my mind. I remembered it all now – the captured coach, the sea cavern, and the dark subterranean tunnel.

"George!" I cried – "George Woodley! Is he safe? He was with me in the passage."

"Yes, he's quite safe," answered Mrs. Coverthorne, with a smile. "He's down in the kitchen now, having his dinner. You shall see him again by-and-by, but just for the present you must keep very quiet and not talk."

It seemed no hardship for the time being to lie warm and snug in bed, and in the wakeful intervals between my dozes I recalled and pieced together the whole story of our adventure. Once when I woke I was surprised to find Mr. Denny in the room, standing gazing out of the window with his hands under his coat tails. Some slight movement on my part caused him to turn; he smiled and nodded, and moved towards the bed.

"Feeling as if you could relish a good beef-steak and slice of pudding?" he inquired.

"Not just yet," I answered feebly. "O Mr. Denny," I continued, remembering something which, since my return of memory, had been puzzling my brain, "was that the secret place that George and I discovered?"

"Yes," he answered; "but I fancy you discovered something more important than the hidden chamber." He said this with a dry chuckle, and producing his little tortoise-shell box took a pinch of snuff.

"What was that?" I asked languidly.

"Well, I don't think you'd understand if I told you. Better wait, and you shall hear all in good time."

I must have slept most of that day. Thanks to my youth and good constitution, I was suffering from nothing worse than exhaustion and a severe cold, and I was much stronger when Miles came to see me the following morning.

He had already heard our story from George Woodley; indeed, I think that by this time there was hardly a man, woman, or child on the whole countryside but had listened to a more or less exaggerated narrative of our adventures. In some of these garbled accounts George and I were reported to have done and endured the most extraordinary things. One old lady, to her dying day, could never be persuaded otherwise than that the convicts had locked us inside the coach, and then sent us and it together bodily over the cliff.