The Spanish Cave (2 page)

“Well, my son,” he would say after the hour had passed in talk, “we've decided whether we think that King Pelayo really drove the Moors out of Asturias or not. That is time well spent.”

And Dick, learning all the while, would feel that he really had decided something.

When the break came that morning, Father Juan said with a smile:

“I suppose you're bursting to hear all about the Cave of the Angels, Ricardito.”

“You do know all about it, don't you, padre?” asked Dick eagerly.

“Not much more than you do, really,” answered the priest. “From time immemorial there has been a belief along the coast that the Cave of the Angels is in some way dangerous. I expect that one of the early Christian missionaries in Asturias gave it its name to try and make the people less afraid of it.”

“But why should they think it dangerous?” asked Dick.

“No reason at all that I know of. I don't think a man or a boat has ever been lost there. But often nets and anchors have brought up bones and pieces of iron and old weapons. It wouldn't surprise me if there were an undersea
current setting into the cliff which sweeps up all the loose matter on the rock bottom. Do you think that's possible, Dick? You know the coast pretty well.”

“It might be,” answered Dick, flattered at the natural way in which Father Juan asked his opinion, “but there's no surface current, and a ledge runs out under water from the cliff, so that the sea is only about twenty feet deep at low tide.”

“It's more than that right below the cave,” said Father Juan.

“What!” exclaimed Dick. “Have you sounded it?”

“I tried to. But in one place I couldn't find bottom at fifty fathoms.”

“I don't believe even Pablo knows that,” Dick said admiringly. “What were you doing there, padre?”

“As the humble priest of this parish,” replied Father Juan simply, “it's my duty to find out all I can about it.”

There and then Dick firmly made up his mind to investigate the Cave of the Angels and its surroundings for himself. But he wanted to know more of what he might meet there.

“Father Juan, you don't think there's anything in what the village believes? You don't think the cave is spooky, do you?”

Father Juan looked him full in the face with gentle, steady eyes.

“I know it is not,” he answered with absolute certainty. “You shouldn't believe the old wives' tales, Ricardito.
There is nothing in all creation that a boy with a brave heart and a clear conscience need fear.”

“Well, I don't,” replied Dick. “I just wanted to hear you say so, though.”

And for the rest of the hour Father Juan told him all the horrible folk-tales of Asturias, and then explained every one of them away.

“Hm,” said Father Juan, looking at his watch. “Now that we've decided there are no such things as ghosts, I suppose we'd better have some lunch.”

In the afternoon Dick went to call on Doña Mariquita. She was not in, but her daughter was. Twelve-year-old Maria de los Dolores Pelayo y Carvacal de Torrelavega, Condesa de Ribadasella, direct descendant of the very King Pelayo, who had won back Asturias for the Christians, was churning butter in the dairy. To her friends she was known as plain Lola Pelayo. The villagers called her
la condesita—
the little countess. Father Juan occasionally addressed her by one or all of her titles. She was a slip of a long-legged girl, as delicate as a flower on a long, wavy stalk. She had a pale ivory skin, masses of straight black hair, and dark blue eyes. She was loveliest when she was very thoughtful or very angry. At other times she looked the mischievous little imp that she was. Although she was a countess, she and her mother had hardly any money; but they lived well, for they owned three cows, some chickens, a garden full of fruit and a house that five hundred years earlier had belonged to the captain of the Count of Ribadasella's guard.

“Hello, Lola!” said Dick.

“Hola, Ricardito! What's new?”

“Haven't you heard? Pablo and I found a skull below the Cave of the Angels. …”

“Ricardito!” Lola cut him short with a little imperious wave of her hand. “Don't tell me about that! I don't want to hear!”

“What's there to be afraid of in an old skull?” said Dick in his most superior manner. “Why, it had barnacles on it!”

“You beastly little heathen!” Lola cried.

“I'm not a heathen!” declared Dick indignantly. “My grandfather was a bishop. He wore a skirt!”

“My grandfather had a great-grandfather whose great-grandfather governed all America,” remarked Lola quietly. If Dick was going to bring ancestors into the argument, he hadn't a chance of competing.

“One of those chaps who were always being beaten by the English?” asked Dick.

“They weren't beaten!” Lola exclaimed. “And the English were pirates! And when they were caught they were hung!”

“I suppose you haven't heard of Drake,” said Dick sarcastically.

“Of course I have! He was a heathen pirate who sacked towns when there wasn't any war going on!”

“He beat the Spaniards anyway,” Dick said.

“Of course he did,” answered Lola. “Because we weren't expecting him. It wasn't fair.”

“Bosh!” said Dick, giving up the argument. “And I'd
rather be a heathen pirate than believe there's a ghost in the Cave of the Angels that eats people!”

“Will you stop!” cried Lola, putting her hands over her ears. “I tell you I don't want to talk about it! It's unlucky.”

“Fancy being a countess and afraid of ghosts!” jeered Dick.

“Well, if you aren't afraid of them, go and spend a night in the cave!” snapped Lola, her blue eyes flashing with temper.

“I will,” said Dick. “I'll go to-night. You see if I don't!”

He marched out of the dairy, whistling. Lola laughed at him till he was out of sight. Then she sat down on the floor and cried, with her head resting on the edge of a tub of milk and her two long black plaits floating on the surface.

Dick had intended to stand watch over the cave in the daytime, not at night. But he had accepted the dare and there was no getting out of it. Anyway, he did not think he would be very frightened. Many a time he had been on and about the cliffs after nightfall. With Hal he had bathed in the coves by moonlight, and, though it was forbidden, had sometimes slipped out on hot nights to bathe by himself.

“I'll show that dago girl!” he declared, kicking an empty tin that lay in his path so that it shot over the hedge like a bullet.

Dick had a lot of plain commonsense. The one thing that annoyed him about his friends—all except Father
Juan—was their superstition. When Pablo wouldn't let him whistle in the boat because it was unlucky, or Paca stuck a needle in his coat to keep witches away, Dick longed to make fun of them. But since he had caught something of the Spanish politeness he never said what he thought. He was wickedly glad that he had to spend a night in the Cave of the Angels; it would shock everybody, and be a kind of revenge for all the times he had kept his mouth shut.

Hal, he knew, would not be home that night. He was far up in the mountains, planning the course of the line which, burrowing under the peaks and spanning the torrents and zig-zagging up the slopes, would link Villadonga and its valley to the rest of Spain. As for Paca, she would be none the wiser if he stayed out all night.

He had supper, sitting all alone at the head of the long, massive dining-table. Then he went up to his room and waited until he heard Paca go to bed. Soon afterwards the sound of her hearty snores rumbled along the corridors of the house. Dick crept down the stairs, which creaked so that anyone but Paca would have been awakened, and explored the larder. He filled a leather bottle with water, and cut himself a foot of
chorizo,
hard, highly spiced sausage that was easy to carry and always tasted better out of doors than it did in the house. Hal had impressed it on him long since that he should never go alone into wild country without food and water; for, said Hal, one never knows what may happen.

“One never knows what may happen,” repeated Dick to himself as he slung the leather bottle at his waist and
dropped the sausage into his shirt—a bad habit he had learned from Pablo.

Cutting across the fields to avoid meeting any of the villagers, he soon hit the grass track that followed the valley behind the cliffs. Villadonga lay on a narrow strip of low-lying plain, which ran for miles between the cliffs and the mountains. In places there were streams, and fields where cattle pastured, but most of the plain was covered with great white boulders and broken by rocky holes full of sea water which had come up underground. Some two miles inland the ground rose sharply, soaring up to the Cantabrian Mountains—the Peaks of Europe, as the Spaniards call them—which formed an unbroken line of precipices where wolves and boars lived undisturbed. No railway and only the roughest roads crossed them, so that Villadonga was cut off from the world. The easiest way of getting to the villages of the little plain was by sea—but by sea few strangers came. The liners and the deep-sea fishing fleets passed far out, for there were no commercial ports within fifty miles.

Dick easily threaded his way between the boulders and round the coves, for he knew the path. It was about five miles from Villadonga to the Cave of the Angels, and after an hour-and-a-half's walking he guessed he must be close by it. He turned off the path and climbed the gentle slope to his left until the ground stopped short as if cut by a knife. There below him was the Atlantic, calm and dark save for the white phosphorescent patches where a ripple plashed on a rock or a fish broke the surface.

The cave lay a little to his right, half-way down the cliff. A faint gleam of light shone from its mouth, and instantly Dick dropped on his stomach to watch. Then he remembered St. Andrew—perhaps someone had lighted a candle before the image. He had seen stumps of candles there before. He climbed cautiously down the cliff and peered into the cave. That was it. A candle was burning down in front of the saint, and his thin face, carved by some unknown artist in the Middle Ages, seemed to smile less sternly in the flickering light. As Dick entered the cave the candle went out.

Dick first explored the cave with his flash-light. He saw no more than he had always seen; a hollow running back not more than twenty feet, with bare rock walls on which the pious had carved some short prayers, and the impious their initials. Now that he knew there was nothing in the cave behind him, he sat down at the mouth, with his legs dangling over the sea. It occurred to him that he might be the first person to have spent a night in the cave for hundreds of years. And in that he was perfectly right.

There was no sound in the world but the lap of the little waves at his feet. The silence did not frighten him. He picked out the stars that he knew, and watched the Great Bear slowly wheel overhead as the night wore on. Sometimes he cut a piece of his sausage and chewed it slowly for something to do.

Meanwhile the level of the sea rose. It was one of the two highest tides of the year, the spring tide nearest to the September equinox, and the water rose and rose until it
was only a little distance below his feet. He was tempted to dive in and have a swim, for he could easily climb up again; but something held him back. He didn't want to go into the water—not now. He shivered a little, and switched his flash-light on to the back of the cave. It gave him a sense of security to see that St. Andrew was still standing calmly in his place. The tide was at its very height now, and he felt, as men do when the tide turns, that all the shore and the life of the shore were expecting something.

Suddenly the air was shaken by a sound. It was more a vibration than a sound. It was like the noise that a ship makes when the steam is rushing through the siren without enough force to blow it. The air quivered, and Dick thought he heard a high, powerful scream—but on so high a note that it could hardly be heard at all. He peered out to sea, straining his eyes through the darkness. He saw the water break into an arrow of white foam as something cut through it moving fast out to sea. He could just make out a massive object which broke the surface and then disappeared. It looked like a submarine.

The night was silent again. Dick thought that he must have exaggerated the size of the mass that foamed through the water; perhaps it was merely a porpoise leaping and diving in pursuit of a school of fish. But then the waves that curled away from the thing's course broke on a rock near by. Dick, like everyone who sails a small boat, had been tossed about in the wash from a passing steamer. He reckoned that the boat, if it were a boat, that had caused the
wash now breaking on the rock, must have powerful engines and be bigger than any of the fishing craft along the coast.

Dick no longer felt that the sea was friendly. He sat down as far away from it as he could get, right at the back of the cave. He was proud of himself, and thrilled at his discovery that there really was some mystery in the waters beneath him. But he knew that he had been in danger, and would have given a lot to know what it was.

Then he thought he heard a voice call his name. It was weird, and Dick was frightened. He froze, holding his breath so as to hear every murmur of the night.

The voice called again:

“Hola, Ricardito!”

This time he recognised it. He ran to the cave's mouth. There below him was a boat, and Lola in it.

“Oh, there you are!” said Lola, trying to keep her voice as matter-of-fact as possible.

“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Dick, amazed.

“I thought you'd be lonely,” she answered airily, “so I just came along.”

But she couldn't keep up her pretence any longer.

“Ricardito!” she cried, her deep, hoarse, little voice breaking with anxiety. “Are you all right? Tell me you're not hurt! It's all my fault you came here. I'll never forgive myself, Ricardito!”