stones, and the cry of the seagulls' young in their nests on the
ledges. Then, very slowly, as the slack water urged it, I saw the red
stem-piece of a rather large boat nosing slowly forward apparently
from the cliff-face towards the great rock immediately in front of
it. The secret was plain in a moment. Here was a cave with a
sea-entrance, and a cave big enough to hide a large, seagoing fisher's
boat; a cave, too, so perfectly hidden that it could not possibly be
seen from any point except right at the mouth. A coastguard's boat
could row within three yards of the entrance and never once suspect
its being there, unless, at a very low tide, the sea clucked strangely
from somewhere within. Any men entering the little bay in a boat would
see only the big rock hiding the face of the cliff. No one would
suspect that behind the rock lay a big cave accessible from the sea,
at low tide in fair weather. Even in foul weather, good boatmen (and
all the night-riders were wonderful fellows in a boat) could have made
that cave in safety, for at the mouth of the little bay there was a
great rock, which shut it in on the southwest side, so that in our bad
southwesterly gales the bay or cove would have been sheltered, though
full of the foam spattered from the sheltering crag.

I had found the cave, but my next task was to find an entrance, and
that seemed to be no easy matter. I searched every inch of the
cliff-face for a foothold, but there was nothing there big enough for
anything bigger than a sea-lark. I could never have clambered down the
cliff, even had I the necessary nerve, which I certainly had not. The
only way down was to shut my eyes and walk over the cliff-edge, and
trust to luck at the bottom, and "that was one beyond me"--only Marah
Gorsuch would have tried that way. No; there was no way down the
cliff-side, that was certain.