fill and resound in the dark vaulted cave, the glimmer
of the dammer torches, the daring climbers far up in
the pitchy recesses, the whirring of a thousand wings,
the sea beating hoarsely against the blind walls of
the cave!
As we went on grey egrets skimmed the water like
phantoms before us, streamers of colour, reflected from
the cliffs, painted its lustrous surface, and silvery showers
of fish, driven up to the light for their lives, flashed in
the sun. The Saldn tried with their spears, under the
shadow of the walls, where larger game lay concealed,
and the sea-cunny toiled up steep places after delicate
orchids, plunging back into the sea, and spluttering and
laughing like a child.
At noon, from the launch, there became visible a
faint pinprick of light in the cave, and I knew the way
was open at last. It was dead low water, and the bay,
as we rowed across it to the cave’s mouth, was lean
from the depletion of the tide. The cave from the same
cause had quadrupled in size, and its roof, under which
I had stooped to enter, now rose far out of reach above
my head. Water still dripped from it as we advanced,
and green and scarlet weeds and berries flune a colour
over the interior. The sinister murmur of the lapping
sea was stilled, but every sound we uttered gathered
a deep and monstrous intonation from the vaulting of
the cave. A cool wind blew through the narrow
aperture, as, lying on our backs in the boat, we pushed
it forward with our hands against the roof. Beyond its
darkness lay a sheet of pale green water and a world
of sunlight. Steering slowly through the devious passage,
we emerged at last upon the lake. Its walls rose
up, sheer and steep, in a million pinnacles of rock, to
a height of a thousand feet. Save the low-browed
passage by which we had come, there was apparent
neither inlet nor exit. The waters lay calm, unruffled,
and still. The blue sky gleamed overhead. It was
hard to believe that we were here in the midst of the
ocean.
The Salôn who accompanied us led me to a cave
that lies at the south-east corner of the lake! The
approach to it was heavy with slime and all the strange
débris of the departed tide. From the deep gloom of
the inner hall, the swallows flew out in swarms, and
high up from invisible recesses came the million-fold
“ chuck-chuck ” of thé nesting birds. A strange
creature, with prawn-like lip, beady eyes, and twitching
antennae, the whole pose of his body indicative of
vigilant dread, advanced with his shell on his back
across the slime. The place seemed fitly peopled with
such creatures as he. As I climbed back into the
boat, a young python in the water stole away swiftly
in the effort to escape unseen. The lascar at the
boat’s prow struck him with an oar, and pinned him
down to the muddy bottom. He wriggled free and
made a dash for the rock, but meeting a wall, which he
essayed with impotent fury, he came by his death.
The lascar moralised on fate. It is the Musulman’s
favourite text. “ See,” he said, as the vivid coils lay
broken in the bottom of the boat, “ his hour had come,