scarcely less infected with delight than I was. And the
sea-cunny, who had come with me in the gig, ran to
and fro, flinging his casting net for minnows.
But the sand, we found on subsequent inspection,
was patterned with curious traces. The bathing-place
of the gods was an alligator pool!
“ Wah,” said the sea-cunny, staring at the prints on
the narrowing sand, while from the cave there came the
sinister booming of the tide, “ wah—it is a place of
devils, a Shait an-Ka-Jagah.”
The sea-cunny, for it is time to introduce him, is an
elemental man ; with sinews and a chest of iron, a square
jaw, a deep, harsh, baying voice, and bloodshot eyes ;
a splendid figure of rough manhood, destined by nature
for the piratic calling of his ancestors, but yoked by fate
to a civilised life, and now a desperate assistant in any
cause that appeals to his sense of loyalty.
Taking to the gig,_we made for the opening ot the
bay, and had nearly come out of this strange cauldron
of devilry and beauty, when the conviction came
upon me that the massive bastion of rock under
which the cave lay was part of an outer defence,
and not the main wall of the island fortress. “ Allah
— Khuda! ” said the sea-cunny, rising to his: feet
in the swaying boat, “ there is of a surety something
on the other side.” Some trick of the slant fading
sunlight revealed to us, in a moment, what We had
failed to see during the hours we had been looking
upon the stony face of the island. Late as the hour
was, we turned with a common instinct to the exposing
5 6 8
of its mystery. Rowing slowly under the forbidding
bastions of rock which offered no foothold, we came
at length upon a place up which a man might venture
to climb. It was inhospitable, but the sea-cunny was
not to be restrained. While he was away, lost in the
gathering dark, I rowed on to the cave, and there flung
into the blind water objects which I meant to go and
look for _on the far side of the island, in case there
proved to be an exit for the flood now visibly being
swallowed into the recesses of the cave. My plans
were obliterated by the harsh roaring voice of the
sea-cunny, which, coming from afar, filled the dark vault
about me with its echoes. “ God,” I heard him calling ;
for the man was frequent in his appeals to heaven, “ I
have found it. There is water, water, a lake within.”
Leaving the boat to the lascar, I climbed up the face
of the rock. It struck up on all sides in thin fluted
pinnacles, like the columns of an ant-hill. “ Churry-Ke-
mafik,” said the sea-cunny, tapping one large pinnacle
with his hand, and it rang like metal.
“ Allah,” he said, “ but they are sharp. If a man
were to fall here—Bus Khatas ho giya ” (There would
be an end of him). Allowing for his picturesque
phraseology, there was in fact some trouble in climbing.
It was nearly dark, and the only means of ascent
were offered by these sword-edges of rock rising one
above the other.
By this means I came, before the night made seeing
impossible, to a- glimpse of what the sea-cunny had
discovered, a lake of opaque green water set in an