"M. Torode shuts the doors," said my grandfather tersely. "B'en! we will
try in the dark."

Between the softness of the turf and the heat of the sun and my great
weariness, I was just on the point of falling asleep, when Uncle George
came back from a look at his cleft, and picked up his loads, and said,
"Come!" and five minutes later we were standing behind him in the salt
coolness of the little black chasm, among the slabs and boulders and the
fresh sea pools. And still we saw no entrance.

But he went to the inner side of a great slab that lay wedged against the
wall of the chasm, and, stooping there, dragged out rock after rock,
cunningly piled so that the waves could not displace them, until a small
opening was disclosed behind the leaning slab. It was no more than three
feet high, and we had to creep in on our hands and knees, which my
grandfather, from his size and stiffness, found no easy matter.

The tunnel led straight in for a space of twenty feet or so, and then
struck upwards, with a very rough floor which made no easy crawling ground,
and a roof set with ragged rocks for unwary heads. The little light that
came in round the corner of the slab in the dark chasm very soon left us,
and we crawled on in the dark, hoping, one of us at all events, that the
road was not a long one. And suddenly we breathed more freely and found a
welcome space above our heads.

Uncle George struck flint and steel and lit a candle, and we found
ourselves in a long narrow chamber, which looked just a fault in the
rocks, or the space out of which the softer stuff had sunk away. The roof
we could not see, but from the slope of the walls on either side I thought
they probably met at a point a great way up, and the narrow crack of a cave