Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1907 — The Child of the Cave [ARTICLE]

The Child of the Cave

By FRANK BARRETT

CHAPTER lll.— (Continued.) “Is anyone down there?”. I called There was no reply nut the echo of tny own voice as it rnng down the sjiaft. The silence troubled me; the hollow ring of my voice scared me. I looked about and found a candle and a box of matches on the shelf. Unfastening the rope, I lowered the bucket to the level of the <rrcnlar well, set the candle inside, and lit it; then letting the cord slip slowly through my hands, I watched the descent of the light. I,t grew fainted and fa-ii’er, sntil at length it failed to show the surrounding brickwork, and 1 saw nothing but a faint halo round the spwk of I'-g-c. The well -seemed to be interminably deep. Aa the knot that finished the rope’s end came into my hand the bucket reached the bottom, and The handle struck-+bo-side, with a clatter that rung up to ivy ear •bout two seconds after. If a body had been lying at the boitotn the bucket must almost of necessity have •truck it. ami not the bottom, as it d' L , If a man had been standing upright some gleam of reflected light must have discovered him. I saw absolutely .nothing, but the steady speck of light and its halo. I drew the bucket up and dropped It twice or thrice. undnalied - again without any result. Could my grandfather have been delirious when he sent me on this wild goose chase? 1 asked myself, as I slowly drew Bp the bucket to the top. Reflecting -that I had not yet carried out his instructions, 1 determined to make one Last experiment. I took out the candle and charged the bucket with the eatables named by my grandfather, lowered them down, and whistled nsrf calling a dog. It seemed to me as I batoned while counting fifty that I heard • movement below, and I counted an additional twenty to give the thing a fair trial. When I drew up again, to my intense astonishment, I found that the food had been taken out, and an empty pitcher put into the bucket. My grandfather had forgotten to mention drink, and the creature below had sent up the pitcher as a reminder. Clearly whatever the thing was it had hands. I filled the pitcher from a tub of clear water that stood in one corner of the washhouse, and sent it down, completely bewildered by the mystery. When it touched the bottom 1 whistled again anti listened. Then from below there came up the queerest elfish and most plaintive sounds I ever heard. It was like nothing more than the swelling rise and fading fail of "'in ’Aeolian narpr

CHAPTER IV. What was to be done? When I again towered a light the sound ceased, and nothing was visible. An athlete co ild have slipiicd down the bucket rope and possibly have come up again hand over hand. But that was beyond my power, even if I had found courage to make the attempt and face the unknown. Certainly I must go down there and find out the secret of the villainous old smuggler, my great grandfather. I felt sure that my grandfather, always under the domination of his father, was playing but an accessory part in this dramatic business, and I saw the necessity for acting with caution to accomplish an investigation successfully. I closed the well, left the bucket hangtag: as I had found it, and quitted tne cottage. It had struck me in taking a last glance at the washhouse that it was e queer place for a well to be sunk, for the house stood within a hundred yards of the cliff's edge. To be sure a great mass of the cliff had fallen away, and at one time it might have tapjasl a reservoir for a stream percolating through the chalk. But now I accounted for its existence there by a more satisfactory conclusion. It was the secret way that was said to have been used for communicating with the caves bn the shore. It was ‘quite possible that, invisible from th£ top, an outlet at the bottom Jed laterally into the Choked caverns. That hypothesis accounted for my seeing no one at the bot, tour of the shaft when 1 let down the light. I said nothing about the pitcher, or the strange sounds, or my suspicions, to my grandfather when I returned, but I feigned to be prodigiously curious wtih respect to the bear. “Young ’uns don’t oughter ask questions,” replied the old man, very well pleased with my pretended a'mpllc.'iy. "All they’re got To do Is *a *nts t what*s ■aid to ’em; that's wltat father has been hammering into me these last seventy years. Now you’re got to go over to Bonport and find father, d’ye see? You’re got to go and leave word everywhere tbet his son wants him—being took qu>s<r. And if he ain’t to be found at Bonport you can go over to Stringham and Shoreby and Puntness, and you might likewise run over to Towerbndge. When you’re found him tell him you want a hundred pounds. I daresay he'll bully yoj at fust, but if he sees you going off to •Id Fenwick, (be land agent, he'll come down with th* money I warrant. Then when you’re got the money you can sl : p your cable and run fur fureign parts at once, because it ain’t right sci young *uu to be hanging about doing nothing. Bend father on to me. but you needn’t come back yourself. You clap on all M’l while the wind's fair. Now that’s what you're got to do. But look here, if you do not find father by to-morrow morning, you’re got to come back here by noon, because there ain’t no one else to feed that gallus bear, d’ye see?” Ac coon as I had finished my dinner I Went to a chip’s chandler, and bought a coil of sixty fathoms of stout hemp cord. With the aid of c lad I carried it to the cottage on the cliff. I paid the boy, and waited until he was well out of sight before beginning my work. I had to break into the house, for, ■■ ft may well be imagined, my grandfather

had taken the keys-from me on my return and slipped them under his pillow. The simplest way was to get through a window ; so having broken a pan’ Ol glass with a stone, I unfastened the catch and lifted the sash; this done, entrance was simple enough. I hn tiled the cord into the washhouse, and, finding ft hatchet, with a few vigorous strokes I split the cover of the well where it was attached to the hinge dnd threw it open. Then I unhitched,, therope from the bleat in the Wall, Setting the bucket oh the edge of the well, and firmly knotted the end to the cord I had brought with me. This done, I put the hatchet and a stout jackknife that I found on the shelf into the bucket for my protection, for it seemed to me not unlikely that the enptive, w-hoever be might be, ignorant of my intentions, might attempt to wreak upon me the vengeance .he owed his captors. A couple of candies and a box of matches completed my equipment, and then.getting upon the low wall I stepped into the bucket, slipped the end of The cord through the handle,,and, pulling myself up an inch, swing over the shaft. My heart stuck in my throat as I swung there, realizing my perilous position and the ;>ossibly greater risk I was about to encounter; then, my courage returning. I began slowly to pay out the rope. When tlie knot that joined the two ropes hitch** ed under the handle of the bucket I paus'ed again. I was now half way down, and for the rest of the descent must 1 trust to the rope I had bought at the chandler's. What if it were rotten or faulty in some parts? There was no going backr that was certhni'; and so after a moment's indecision I suffered the knot to slip past the handle and let myself down as slowly as I could, lest the friction should injure the cord, bethinking me that I should have to return, as well as descend, in safety. At length, to my great satisfaction, the strain on the rope came to an end, and I found myself at the bottom of the shaft, with a good length of cord to spare. I could see nothing b\it the faint glimmer of light in the washhouse over my head; the rest was to my eyes absolute obscurity. An audible movement on my right hand' caused me to dive into the bucket for a weapon of defense. I found the jackknife, and opening it stood ready for the attack, at the same time saying saying with as steady a voice as I could command, “Whoever is down here I am his ftiend.”

There was no answer, no repetition of the sound, 1 thing the silence had a more terrifying effect upon my senses than if I had been aroused by the fiercest aud most menacing voice. I felt that I might be standing within arm’s reach of an unseen foe preparing to spring upon me. To put an end to this suspense 1 stuck the open knife between my teeth and struck a match. As I expected, I found a brick opening before me; but the light of the match -was insufficient to reveal anything more than a few feet of brick work on each side; beyond, the darkness was impenetrable. I drew out one of the candles and lit it, throwing down the match when the wick caught. The next moment as I was about to tsep sideways from the bucket I heard a sharp hiss, and looking down with my candle raised found that the step if taken would probably have been my last. e I was not nearly at the bottom of the shaft, but only on a plank set across it, the hissing sound was caused by the falling of the lighted match into the water below. The cunning of the old smugglers who had used the well as a secret passage to the caves was evident in this, for the plank being removed water would have been drawn from the well to disprove any suspicion of inquiring revenue officers. This escape and the shock it gave to my. nerves still more cautious in my advance. With the light liedl out before me in my left hand, and the open knife in my right, 1 made my way slowly nad, ' must own, with a most unpleasant sensation of fear, along the bricked passage. Presently 1 found myself at the entrance to a cave, spacious and lofty, shored up at intervals with planks nad great ship timbers. The white chalk reflecting the rays of the candle made the cavern comparatively light. In front of me was a mass of debris sloping up to the ro-»f, where the fallen cliff choked the shore entrance; but I could* see ne sign of any habitant nor hear any sound. Suddenly the silence was broken by a loud caw, and, shifting the candle, I perceived in a recess that had been thrown into darkness by the shadow of a beam, a smooth slab of chalk on which was set the pitcher I had lowered in the morning, and beside it a piece of the bread on which a jackdaw was perched. He looked up at me for a moment with his gray eye and then set to work again digging out the crumbs vigorously. I stepped toward the recess, the jackdaw ceased pegging at the bread, eyed me askance, and not liking the look df me b"i'i»'d off sttttfarther into the darkness. I followed on and found the recess to be an opening into i second cave. By the side of the slab there were Rome rags neatly arranged on a boulder to form a cushion. 1 had no doubt now that I should find the real captive in thy next cave. Surely enough, I did, and ■ strange one it was. tod. A second caw from the jackdaw drew my eye at once to the left of the entrance to the second cave, and there in a kind of alcove, bung about with strips of colored rags in a barbarous attempt at decoration, I saw crouching upon a litter of straw over»pread with blankets a child with long hair falling over h*>r shoulders. The jackdaw was perched on her shoulder, and in contrast with its plumage the child’s hair seemed quite

white. X, could not see her face, for she had covered it with her thin white hands to shut out what to her unaccustomed senses was a blinding light—the candle, to me a feeble glimmer. .CHAPTER V. I put the caudle in a crevice and wedged in a piece of' chalk before it, so subduing the light as to make it bearable to the poor thing’s eyes, and then I gently drew her hands from her face and raised her to her feet. She was a tall slip of a girl, quite a child seemingly, though in reality she was eighteen. Her face was quite colorless, long and thin, but her features were modeled with exquisite delicacy.' She looked like one of those frail and tender plants that are reared in darkness. The darkness and lustre of her eyes gave to this strange colorless face an expression, more than human—something spiritual, and not of our world. I found that the retina was almost invisible, and by long disuse had lost its power of contraction, while the pupil had become abnormally distended to catch, the scant rays of light diffused in the Caverns. She was dressed in a sack of blue serge, without sleeves—a garment fashioned to the Idea of fitness evolved by my grandfather; yet this rude garment looked well upon her, falling to the graceful turves of her figure, and throwing into relief the long white arms and pretty nude feet; it seemed to me that a dress of modern cut would have been less in character with her unnatural beauty, and have pronounced her still more-pathetically not of our world. We stood looking at each other in silent amazement, for pity choked me. Presently she lifted her hand slowly and touched my moustache; then walking to the back with a step as graceful ae the rise and dip -of a gull on the wing, she looked at my head, and finding that my hair was cut short, she clapped her hands together and burst into a peal of laughter. Then she came round to look me in the face again, and finding the tears running down my cheek —for her laughter told a tale of lifelong captivity in this sunless prison that touched my heart to the ■ quick—she became instantly grave, her own eyes and with inarticulated sounds of sympathy she stroked my head, as though she would console me for the loss of my hair, which she must have conceived was the cause of my grief. “Cannot you speak, you poor little ' thing?” T asked. The sound alone was intelligible to her, and she responded with sounds that were but a musical echo of my words. Hearing her voice the jackdaw cawed, and she replied with a caw as like his as she could accomplish. Clearly she had no notion of speech, and it was hopeless to think of getting from her any explanation of her strange condition and how she came there. Had she never learned the use of speech, or had she been there so long that the early days of her childhood were forgotten, I wondered. I tried her again, saying a few words in the few languages that I knew. She listened attentively, smiling as if it gave her pleasure to hear the sound of a human voice, but showing no other signs of intelligence ; then she, to give variety to the amusement, sang, making a kind of music like that I had heard from the mouth of the well, a continued undulating rise and fall of sound as Tong as the breath could be maintained. In all my life I never heard anything so plaintively sweet and sad. It seemed to express more than could have bene told by words; it was the revelation of a joyless life, of unspeakable yearning, and indefinable regrets. “Poor child, poor child,” I said involuntarily. “Toor child, poor child I” she echoed, in the same tone of sorrow and commiseration. She seemed to see the significance of my sympathy, to understand that my words were an expression of kindness, for she took up my hand and smoothed her cheek against it caressingly. I bent down and kissed her head—for she was to me no more than a little child. The sound of my kiss perplexed her, and looking up in my face she bade me by a gesture to kiss again. I lifted the hand that still clung to mine and kissed the back of it. She kisesd mine, and repeating the action of her lips once or twice, laughed at the sound she had never heard before. (To be continued.)