The Spanish Cave (3 page)

Dick cut the water in a neat dive, and swam out to her.

“Darn it!” he grumbled to himself. “What does she want to make all this fuss for?”

He hauled himself aboard and sat on the thwart, dripping, and laughing at her.

“I'm glad I'm not alone any more,” said Lola humbly. “There wasn't much wind, and I didn't think I'd ever get to you. And then a big boat passed close to, and the wash nearly upset me.”

“Did you see it?” asked Dick eagerly.

“No,” Lola answered. “The drunken pigs didn't carry any lights.”

“Are you sure it was a boat?”

“What else could it have been?” replied Lola wonderingly. “But didn't you hear it, Ricardito?”

Dick hesitated a moment before he answered. He decided to tell his story only to Hal. He did not want to get all the villagers excited; it would spoil his chances of solving the mystery.

“I heard something that sounded like steam escaping,” he said guardedly.

“Yes, that was it—a nasty, powerful, thin sound. It was horrid, not like any ship I've ever heard. I'd have got under the bedclothes if there had been any,” said Lola.

Dick was suddenly struck by her amazing courage. Believing in all sorts of devils that he didn't believe in at all, she had yet sailed out to the Cave of the Angels in the middle of the night. And she had dared it not from sheer pride like Dick, but because she felt that she had landed a friend in a mess, and that it was up to her to see him through it.

“Lola! You've got guts!” exclaimed Dick in English.

“What does that mean, Ricardito?” Lola asked.

Dick, without thinking, translated the words literally into Spanish.

“Of course I have,” said Lola calmly.

Dick blushed furiously in the darkness.

“I mean you're a brave girl,” he explained.

“Oh!—even if I
am
a countess!” remarked Lola, giggling.

“I didn't mean it when I said that—about countesses being afraid of ghosts,” apologised Dick.

“Well, I'm sorry I said you were a little heathen,” Lola replied.

There was a silence of several minutes while each of them thought what a good companion the other was. Then Dick, puzzled, asked:

“What made you so sure that I would really come here?”

“Silly!” answered Lola in her deep voice, looking as wise and motherly as was possible for a girl of her age. “I know you. If you said you'd go, go you would.”

The breeze freshened, for dawn was not far away. Lola was caught unawares, and the mainsail swung over with a crash. Dick jumped for the tiller and stood out from the cliffs, with the water singing a happy song as it gurgled under the bows.

“Why, this is Pablo's boat!” exclaimed Dick as he felt how she answered the helm. “Did you take it without asking him? He'll be furious if we don't get it back before morning.”

“And if mother finds out that I'm not in bed, she'll be furiouser,” said Lola.

“You'd better run back by land,” Dick suggested. “Then nobody will be awake when you get in. I'll take the boat back.”

“I won't walk at night,” said Lola flatly. “I'm frightened. That's why I came by sea.”

“It will soon be light—look!”

The dawn was coming up; a red and angry sky.

“All right,” Lola said. “I'll just make it if I hurry.”

Dick went about, and ran in close under the cliffs.

“Jump!” he yelled.

Plaits and legs flying, Lola jumped and landed safely.

“Good-bye, heathen dear!” she cried. “See you this afternoon?”

“You bet you will, Lolita!” answered Dick.

The wind was coming out of the dawn; then it veered to the north-west, freshening every minute. Sailing close-hauled, Dick stood well out to sea to clear Offering Key. The boat shot from wave to wave in a smother of foam, and Dick sang at the tiller from sheer joy in the movement. After a while, he stopped singing, jammed the boat into the wind, and took in two reefs. She sailed more easily now, but still the wind rose, and the western sky turned from pearl grey to black. Just off the Key the first squall hit him. The rain lashed his face and the wind laid the boat over on her beam ends. At the same time a big, leisurely, white-capped roller came over the bows with a crash, and filled the boat with three inches of water.

“This won't do,” said Dick to himself. “I can't make it.”

He wore the boat around, taking a shower of spray as he did so, and ran before the wind. He hadn't a very clear idea of what he was going to do, but it was obvious that he could not face those seas in a fifteen-foot dinghy. Tearing towards the cliffs, he thought it out. His best chance was to run for a cove beyond the Cave of the Angels, and beach the boat. He put the helm down and raced back on the course he had come. When a wave bigger than its grey companions bore down upon him, he swung the bows into it, as Pablo had taught him, rode triumphantly over it, and then continued his course.

He was now nearly opposite the cave, and much too close to the cliffs for his comfort. The waves were pounding and spouting on the shallow ledge where Pablo had dived for the anchor the day before. Dick, desperate, tried to tack, but the boat hung in the trough of a wave, and the next caught it and hurled it towards the cliff. The tide, the spring tide which had nearly reached his feet as he sat in the cave, was falling fast; any wave now might fling the boat on the bottom. Dick fought manfully to keep off the lee-shore. The gallant boat took the heavy seas like a steeplechaser going over hurdles, and even with death before his eyes Dick felt a wild pleasure at the way she answered his small hand on the tiller. But it was a losing battle. For every yard he made he was flung back two.

Still, there was a chance. Dick ran straight for the
shore, tossed madly by the waves which, without order or discipline, were leaping up and down over the ledge. He meant to wreck the boat and jump for it, as Lola had jumped two hours before. He looked over his shoulder. Coming down from the north was a wave such as he had never seen. It caught up the spouting water in its course and carried it forward in a great, grim, orderly mass, topped with white. Dick tried to go about and ride over it, but he was too late. It curled over the boat, shutting out the sky. Dick drew a deep breath. The wave fell.

He went down under the weight of water, down and down, waiting for the rock bottom which would smash him to pieces. Whirled back and forth, head over heels, and ever downwards, a thought sprang into his mind as clearly as if he had heard Father Juan's voice:

“Fifty fathoms and no bottom! Fifty fathoms and no bottom!”

The whirling stopped. With bursting lungs he shot upwards like a cork. The water around him was no longer white with dizzy streaks of foam and bubbles, but jet black and smooth. At last, at the limit of his endurance, he came to the surface. He filled his lungs again and again with the precious air, treading water meanwhile. It was pitch dark. A great oily swell was heaving him up and down. Too dazed to know or care what had happened to him, he struck out feebly into the blackness.

CHAPTER TWO

ON the morning of Dick's disappearance, the steam-launch
San José
went down with all hands. She was a deep-sea fishing boat of a type used all along the north coast of Spain; an undecked wooden launch, fifty feet long, with the simplest kind of steam engine amidships. These launches looked the most top-heavy craft, for a brightly painted boiler, topped by an unwieldy funnel, stuck up high above the sides of the boat. Actually, they were wonderfully seaworthy. The weight of engine, water, and fuel acted as ballast, and they could roll, pitch, and waddle through heavy seas without shipping a drop of water. The most frequent accident was the parting of the funnel stays. In that case the funnel went overboard, and the crew came back from the voyage as black as negroes from the blinding smoke.

The
San José
would not have been seriously troubled by the gale that wrecked Dick Garland. She had gone down in the flat calm before dawn. She belonged to the
fishing fleet of Zumaya, a port in the Basque country two hundred miles to the east. The fleet had been working out of sight of land, with the
San José
sailing about two miles closer to the shore than the rest. They saw her masthead lights and the faint glow of her furnace. Then the lights suddenly vanished. A moment later they heard a dull thud, followed by the roar of the exploding boiler as the
San José
went under.

Cutting their nets adrift the fleet steamed to the spot at full speed. Nothing was left of the
San José
but a few oars and casks floating on the water. The
Erreguiña
raced to the port of Villadonga to get help and information from the local fishermen. The rest of the fleet stood by, steaming to and fro in spite of the rising storm. Those Basques felt that they owned the seven seas. Their ancestors, trained by the grey gales of the Bay of Biscay, had shared the north Atlantic with the Vikings long before Spain or England had ever dreamed of sea power.

At sunrise a busy crowd was gathered on the waterfront of Villadonga. Several of the larger boats were preparing to put to sea. Blue-shirted men, stolid and careful, were overhauling the running gear. The women hurried back and forth between the quay and the cottages that lined it, clearing the boats of nets and baskets and bringing dinner pails to their husbands. The
Erreguiña
rocked importantly at the quay-side, while her captain, roaring Basque curses at the laziness of all Spanish officials, hammered at the door of the village postmaster, who was also the telegraph operator. The little man
protested feebly from under his bedclothes, but, finding that this unreasonable seaman would not let him sleep, at last appeared at the door in his night-shirt. Hearing what the captain wanted, he vanished inside again and grabbed his official gold-braided cap, as if he could not send a telegram without it. Then, clad only in the cap and his night-shirt, he scampered down the village street to the post office with the captain pounding heavily after.

One telegram, in Spanish, went to the harbour-master of Zumaya, reporting the loss of the
San José.
A second, in Basque, was addressed to Ramon Echegaray, Harbour Café, Bilbao. The captain did not know where Echegaray lived, but he knew where he invariably was to be found in the afternoon. The telegram read

San José
sunk with all hands seven miles northeast by north of Villadonga. Apparent cause uncharted rock or submerged wreck but no trace of either. Sea dead calm. Can you explain.

Olazábal, master
S.S
.
Erreguiña.

Strolling back to the quay, Captain Olazábal found Pablo waiting for him. Pablo, knowing the local waters better than anyone else, acted as a sort of non-official pilot for the port on the rare occasions when any strange craft visited it.

“Good-morning,
señor capitan
”, said Pablo. “How do you do?”

“Well, I thank you,” answered the captain firmly. “And yourself?”

“Well, thanks be to God.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“Pablo Candelas, at your disposition,” said Pablo.

“Olazábal of Zumaya, who seeks only to be of service to you,” replied the captain, not to be outdone in politeness by any barbarous Asturian.

The ceremonies now being duly completed, Pablo exploded:

“I spit in the milk ! Captain, half an hour ago I'd have been with you. Am I not Pablo Candelas who will help his fellows up to the last drop of his blood? But some robber, the son of a robber, whose mother was a stupendous dog, and whose grandmother defiled her grey hairs with banditry, has stolen my boat!
Carajo,
what a life! As the song says, one mystery is followed by another. Now let me hear, captain!
Ay!
This villainous mother of ours, the sea—what has she done now?”

The captain told him. Pablo cross-examined him in questions which, for all their eloquence and profanity, showed that he knew his coast. Before long Olazábal was treating him with that respect which a ship's captain only gives to a skilled pilot. They looked a reckless pair; Pablo, short and swarthy, with gold rings in his ears, had all the swagger of a pirate; Olazábal, tall, massive, and grey-eyed, had the calm confidence of a man who is sure of his physical force. Olazábal used
to open bottles by tearing off the cap with his teeth. Pablo knocked off the necks with one dexterous flick of his knife.

As they talked, Pablo saw Lola running from the direction of the cliffs; running, running over the bridge and on, staggering utterly spent down the village street, until she collapsed in his arms. He laid her on a pile of brown nets, his arm under her head. As she fought to get back her breath, she looked like a long, silver, graceful fish, gasping out its life.

“Who is she?” asked Olazábal.

“La condesita de Ribadasella,” answered Pablo. “The little flower of our country.”

Lola opened her eyes.

“He's caught on the lee-shore,” she panted, “off the Cave of the Angels. Hurry, Pablo!”

“Who's caught?”

“Ricardito.”

“In the name of all the saints!” exclaimed Pablo. “What's he doing there?”

“Quick! Quick!” cried Lola. “I'll explain as we go. Let's take this big boat.”

She sprang to her feet and jumped into the
Erreguiña.
Olazábal looked at her in admiration.

“A countess indeed!” he said slowly. “Act first and talk later—that was the way of those who made Spain.”

He snapped a crisp order in Basque. The mooring rope splashed on to the water. The engine throbbed
into life. Olazábal and Pablo vaulted over the edge of the quay into the already moving boat.

“Tell Doña Mariquita where her daughter is!” yelled Pablo to the onlookers.

Before they were halfway down the river Lola had told the whole story—how she had taken Pablo's boat and sailed to the Cave of the Angels, and how on her way back by land she had run up to the edge of the cliff to see how Dick was faring in the rising wind.

“When he couldn't make Offering Key,” she said, “he went about and ran back along the coast. He was being driven nearer and nearer to the cliffs, and when I saw I couldn't help him I ran to find you. Has he got a chance, Pablo?”

“How long is it since you saw him?” asked the fisherman.

“Less than an hour ago.”

“An hour, and another hour before we can reach him—even I, Pablo Candelas, could not keep afloat once I was on the ledge in a north-west gale. Be brave,
condesita.”

“Oh, Pablo!” cried Lola. “Why, why did I take your boat?”

“As the song says,” remarked Pablo, shaking his head sadly, “love knows no law.”

The
Erreguiña
was out of the river now, and plunging madly. She was slightly larger than the other boats of the Zumayan fishing fleet. She had a deck-house just forward of the engine containing tiny cabins for Olazábal
and his engineer. On top of it was a bridge and the wheel. The broad stern was decked over for a distance of about twelve feet, forming cramped but comfortable quarters for the crew of five. Otherwise, she was just a long, open boat. Her funnel and upper works were pale orange, and the hull olive green.

Olazábal ordered full speed, weather or no weather, and even Pablo held his breath as the launch swooped dizzily down into the trough of a wave, looking as if she must surely go through, and not over, the next one. But this was the weather for which ugly little
Erreguiña
had been designed. She revelled in it.

“So do the Americans amuse themselves at Coney Island,” said Olazábal with a grin, as
Erreguiña
slid with a sickening lurch from the crest of a big sea, rolled through a complete semicircle, and then sat down on her stern.

He had once taken
Erreguiña
to the cod banks of Newfoundland for a bet. Then he and his crew had gone to New York with their winnings, and in three days of heroic
juerga
—which is Spanish for a binge—had spent the lot on the shutes and switchbacks at Coney Island. Captain Olazábal never forgot it. As for his fellow citizens of Zumaya, they never had a chance to forget it.

Opposite the narrow strait which separated Offering Key from the mainland, Olazábal raised his eyebrows, looking an unspoken question at Pablo.

“Hard a starboard!” yelled Pablo. “We'll put her through!”

He went to the wheel, which Olazábal instantly gave up to him.

“Dead slow!” commanded Pablo.

“Dead slow!” repeated the engineer.

The strait was sown with jagged rocks, and so narrow that Lola often swam across it in calm weather to lie in the sun on Offering Key. In storm, it seethed with mad, white water. So impossible was the passage that Dick, although he could not get round the Key, had never even thought of attempting the strait.

Lola covered her eyes. Olazábal lit a pipe and, with the sweat streaming down his forehead, sat watching Pablo.
Erreguiña
shuddered and quivered as the current tore her this way and that. A line of black rock and white water closed the passage halfway through. Pablo swung the boat broadside on to the current.

“Slow astern!”

“Slow astern!” echoed the engineer.

Erreguiña
tore down on the rocks, backing all the while towards the mainland. In an instant she was between two lines of spouting water.

“Full ahead!” ordered Pablo.

Erreguiña
dashed towards Offering Key, Pablo fighting to keep her straight between the reefs. With the bows almost touching the Key, he span the wheel and put her hard a starboard. There was a horrible rasping sound as a rock tore a sliver of wood off the planking, but
Erreguiña
shot through the gap, and out into the open sea.

“I suppose fishermen don't live very long in Asturias,” said Olazábal as he took over the wheel again.

“It saved us twenty minutes,” replied Pablo, “and I'm pretty fond of this Ricardito. As the song says, friendship knows neither age nor nation.”

“Man, don't think I'm complaining!” answered Olazábal. “I was just interested, that's all!”

Erreguiña
rolled her way along the coast and was soon opposite the Cave of the Angels.

“Can I take her in any closer?” the captain asked.

“Better not,” answered Pablo. “Give me your glasses. If there's hair or hide of him to be seen, I'll make it out from here. And don't think I'm forgetting the
San José.
It's a likely place for her bones. Things get swept in this direction,” he added grimly.

Pablo searched the coast with the glasses. There was no sign of Dick, but it surprised him that there was no wreckage. Then Lola, who had been watching the water closer to, cried:

“Look!”

Pablo followed the direction of her outstretched, trembling arm. There, heaving up and down on the waves, was a mast with a bit of torn sail attached to it. Olazábal ran up alongside, and the crew hauled it aboard.

“Is it?” asked Lola.

Pablo nodded.

“Poor Ricardito!” he said.

They cruised up and down the coast for two hours more. Meanwhile search-parties had reached the spot
by land and were climbing about the cliffs looking for Dick.

At last the
Erreguiña
headed out to sea to speak to the fishing fleet. The other captains intended to return to Zumaya, but agreed that Olazábal should remain a week or more in Asturian waters to pick up what information he could about the loss of the
San José.
At three in the afternoon the
Erreguiña
was back at Villadonga. All the way Lola had sat hunched up in the bows, her head resting on her knees, staring desperately out to sea.

There was a crowd on the quay waiting for their arrival. Paca, her black Sunday mantilla on her head, was weeping loudly and being comforted by Lola's mother. Doña Mariquita tried to put her arms around her, but they were little, delicate arms, and Paca was very tall and stout; it looked as if Doña Mariquita were holding Paca up rather than trying to draw her closer. Lola ran to her mother and the two stood side by side and hand in hand, white-faced, dry-eyed, with set, red lips, looking extraordinarily alike. Just so they had stood when the news came that the Count of Ribadasella had fallen in action at the head of his battalion in Morocco. Just so the Countesses of Ribadasella had heard of the violent deaths of sons and husbands at the taking of Granada, in the loss of the Armada, in Flanders, and in the two Americas.

Hal, back from the mountains, went on board the
Erreguiña
with Father Juan.

“Well?” he asked.

“Wrecked—I spit in the milk!” answered Pablo. “But we haven't found his body, and we've only found the mast of the boat. We won't give up hope yet.”

The postmaster pushed his way importantly through the crowd of little boys surrounding the
Erreguiña.

“Telegram for you!” he said to Olazábal.

The captain opened it. It read: