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CHAPTER XXII
THE ROCK

Here was the dull blue wintry sea under the dull gray wintry sky. No wind blew, no rain fell. A thin, soft sea moisture rose from the sea and met a thin, soft cloud moisture descending from the clouds. The long, even roller of the Atlantic stole slowly, deliberately, sullenly, from the level plains of the ocean, growing to the eye imperceptibly as it came. The water was thickly streaked with tawny, vapid froth; the base of the high, impassable, brown rocky coast was marked by a broad but diminishing line of yellow foam.

No bird was visible in the air, no ship on the sea, no living creature on the land but the two men, O'Hanlon and O'Brien. A mile inland stood lonely Kilcash House, which had for years been the home of the dead man and his beautiful wife. Below, between the towering, oppressive, liver-coloured cliffs and the foam-mantled, blanched blue sea lay the Black Rock, a huge, flat, monstrous table cast off by the land and spurned by the sea.

For a while the two men stood speechless on the edge of the cliff overlooking the barren waste of heaving waters and the sullen ramparts of indomitable heights. The deep boom of the bursting wave, the roar of the outwashing boulders, and the shrill hiss of the falling spray, made the dismal scene more deserted and forlorn. The sea and cliffs were forbidding to man. They seemed to resent the presence of man-to desire, now that they were not engaged in actual war, no intrusion on the lines where their gigantic conflicts were waged.

The Black Rock stretched out half-a-mile from the base of the cliff into the sea, and was half-a-mile wide. Above it the land was slightly hollowed towards the sea, and would, but for the Black Rock beneath, form a bay-like indentation in the shore. The chord of this arc was about six hundred yards, so that the greater mass of the Black Rock projected into the sea beyond the heads of the cliffs.

The Rock, as it was called for brevity in the neighbourhood, was only a few feet above the reach of the waves and broken water when a strong wind blew from the south-west. It shelved outward, and when the waters were very rough, when a storm raged, the shattered waves leaped up on it, and bounded, hissing in irresistible fury, towards the inner cliff, but were arrested, dispersed, and poured down the sides of the Rock ere they reached the inner cliff. The Rock was highest at the centre, and descended to right, left, front, and rear. But although it was lower at the rear than in the centre, it was much higher there than in front. Viewed from above, it was not unlike the back of some prodigious sea monster rising above the surface of the water. In shape it resembled a vast creature of the barnacle kind, the apex of whose shell would represent the highest point of the Rock, and the corrugations stand for the ridges and hollows of the sides from the highest point of the ledge to the lower ones.

The colour, too, was not unlike that of a barnacle. For, although the people had given it the name of the Black Rock, it was black only by comparison with the cliffs. The surface was made up of smooth, slimy ridges, dark blue-green in the hollows, growing lighter as the curve sloped upward, and on the summit, here and there, deep yellow brown or oak.

Winter or summer, the Rock was never quite dry. It was always damp, clammy, treacherous. It was always dangerous to the foot. There was no fear of one who fell slipping into the sea, unless the misfortune occurred very near the brink. Then a fall and a plunge were certain death, for the great rollers of the ocean would grind or dash the life out of a man against these rocks in a few minutes. But many a man had slipped and hurt himself badly, and two fatally, on that cruel Black Rock.

Once a man of the village of Kilcash had fallen, broken his leg in two places, and been carried up the cliff path and across the downs to die. Another had slipped on the top of one ridge. For a moment his body swept backward in an arc like a bent bow, until his head touched the top of the next ridge behind. All his muscles instantly relaxed, his chin was crushed down upon his chest, he rolled for an instant into a shapeless heap, rolled down into the trough, and lay at full length with dead, wide open eyes turned upward to the sun. Several people had from time to time met with dire accidents on that dangerous slope by reason of the uncertain footing it afforded.

But the great terror of the Black Rock did not lie in the greasiness of its surface. The chief danger lay below the surface. The deadly monster of that desolate tract was hidden from view, until suddenly, and generally without warning, it sprang forth upon its victim, and seized him and bore him away to certain and awful death. It gave no chance of respite or rescue; it gave no time for thought or prayer. One moment man in the full vigour of life, full of the pride of life, full joy in life, stood upon that awful field of slippery rock, and the next was caught from behind and dragged into the foaming sea by a force no ten men could fight against for a moment.

All the year round this terrible monster of death lurked here, and upon provocation would rush out, and, when opportunity offered, invariably destroy. It could not be drowned with water or scared by fire, or slain with lethal weapons. It could not be lured or trapped. It would come to an end no one knew when. It had begun to exist centuries ago. It varied in length with the season of the year, and in bulk with the phases of the moon. It had its lair in a cave. No boat along all that coast durst enter the Whale's Mouth for fear of it; for although much could be foretold of its habits, all could not. No one could infallibly predict for an hour what it would do-except one thing: that any boat in that cave when it did appear would infallibly be dashed into a thousand splinters. That was the only thing certain about it. To be caught in its cave would, if possible, be still more terrible than to be caught by it on the Black Rock.

Its dimensions varied from twenty to a hundred and fifty feet one way by ten to twelve and six to eight another.

Along the whole coast it was spoken of with fear. Nothing else like it was known in those parts. It was one of the sights which made holiday makers seek the secluded fishing of Kilcash. The inhabitants knew its ways better than strangers. And yet people of the village had fallen a prey to its fury. More than a dozen villagers had within four generations died in its deadly embrace, and more than an equal number of visitors within the same period. Suppose the season visitors had been at their highest number all the year round, it had been calculated that forty of them would have been sacrificed in the time.

Over and over again visitors had been warned against going near the place; but the attraction of danger proved too strong for prudence, and people would go for mere bravado or out of morbid curiosity. The chance of contracting a fatal malady has no allurements for man: the prospect of a violent death fascinates him. The love of daring certain death by violence is found in few; the willingness to dare great peril by violence is almost universal in young men of healthy bodies and minds. It has been justly said that the most extraordinary contract into which large bodies of men ever voluntarily enter is that by which they agree to stand up in a field and allow themselves to be shot at for thirteenpence a day; and yet men risk their lives daily willingly, at a less price-nay, for no price at all.

Here, on this very Black Rock, a terrible instance occurred with disastrous result five years before, when three young Trinity College students were staying for the summer vacation at Kilcash. They were friends, and lodged in the same cottage. They went on little excursions together. Of course they had heard all about the terrors of the Black Rock. In an hour of eclipse they resolved not only to visit the fatal Rock, but to lunch there under circumstances of the greatest danger. They mentioned their intention freely, and were warned by the simple people of the village that they ran a risk in going to the spot they named, and at the time they selected, and that they absolutely courted death by delaying for luncheon. That afternoon one of the three ran the whole way back into the village and told the appalling tale. He had strayed a few yards from his friends, when suddenly burst upon his ears a thunderous roar. The Rock shook beneath his feet as though it would burst asunder. He was instantly covered and blinded with mist and sea smoke. He gave himself up for lost, and instinctively ran towards the cliff. Then he heard a fearful crash of waters, and again the Rock shook. He wondered his destruction had been so long delayed. He waited until all was still. He turned round. His friends had disappeared. Their bodies were never recovered.

As it has been said, the Black Rock was not in reality black, but a dark, dirty olive green. Perhaps it got its name from the dark or black deeds which had been enacted on it.

Around the Black Rock the cliffs do not stand very high. They reach to little more than a hundred feet above the solid shelf below. In colour they are of a deep liver hue. They lean outward and take the form of huge broad broken pilasters, set against an irregular wall. These cliffs, like the Rock, are always damp, but, unlike the Rock, never clammy. They are smooth and flat, with sharp angles and rectangular fractures. They are cold and hard, and seem built by nature to define for ever the frontier of the ocean.

At the point of the Rock furthest inland the cliff is of a softer nature, and hence the water has eaten deeper in here. The cliff is part clay, part gravel, and part boulder. Here is a temporary break in the continuity of the regular formation. There is no depression on the downs above to correspond with this fault. Thus at the back of what has been called the bay, there are about two hundred yards long of cliff, which the sea would soon tear away if it could get at it. But the Black Rock stood between the greedy ocean and the vulnerable point of the cliff. It formed a sufficient outpost. This part of the bay slants inwards, not outwards, as the two arms. In this part a little copper ore was once found, and a shaft sunk. But the mine proved of no practical value, and, after absorbing much money, was abandoned fifty years ago. The shaft was sunk two hundred feet; but here, even if the mine had proved rich, the water would have presented serious difficulties, for after getting down a hundred and twenty feet it began to appear, and at a hundred and fifty it occasioned delay and inconvenience. Forty years ago the top of the shaft had been covered with planks and clay to prevent accident. Long ago the machinery and wooden engine-house and tool-house had been carried away, and now the site of the head of the shaft was indistinguishable from the other bramble-grown parts of the sloping cliff over the Black Rock. This head of the mine was always carefully avoided by the inhabitants, for every one said some day or other the planks were sure to give way and fall to the bottom. It was of no interest whatever to visitors, for nothing was to be seen, and a landslip had destroyed the rude road long ago made to it. It was on the right-hand side of one looking seaward.

On this inside of the bay of stone ran downwards the path leading to the great table below. It was a natural path almost the whole way. Art of the simplest kind had cut a little here and filled up a little there, and levelled a little in another place, but the lion's share of the work had been found ready to man's hand. There was no attempt at road-making, or attaining to a surface. Those were luxuries of civilisation: this was a work of rough art and benignant nature.

As one faced the sea, the path crossed over from left to right, then from right to left, and finally from left to right. Standing on the cliff at the middle point of the bay, and looking down at the broad expanse of slanting rock, only two things caught the eye, when the dimensions, the colour, and conformation had been taken in. Directly in front, and almost in the middle of the Rock, rose the apex of what has been likened to the shell of a barnacle. It was not more than ten feet above the level of the Rock, twenty feet from its centre, and was part of the Rock itself.

In a direct line with the apex, and about half-way between it and the outer rim of the Rock, there is a black spot which, upon closer inspection, proves to be a hole of some kind. At the distance it is impossible to perceive any more.

Towards this hole O'Hanlon pointed his arm, and said to O'Brien:

"There's the Hole. You know it well enough."

"Of course. But you could not recognise him so far off," said O'Brien, shading his eyes to look.

"No; but I told you I saw him in here quite close;" and he pointed. "He or it went on without hesitation, and then jumped in. He or it, whichever you prefer, O'Brien, went in as sure as I have a head on me. Either that or I am going mad."

O'Brien thought awhile in silence, with his hand on his chin and his eyes turned on the bleak, dreary waste of stone and water before him.

"O'Hanlon, you're not afraid to risk seeing anything-that thing again?" he asked at length-adding, "I want to have a look at the place."

The other hesitated a little before he drew himself up, and said:

"No. I may as well face it and be sure of the worst-be certain whether I am to end my days in a lunatic asylum or not."

The two men descended to the Black Rock.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE HOME OF THE MONSTER

It was now growing dusk. The loneliness of the place was extreme. A few sea-gulls were wheeling and crying in the dull air overhead. They had come back from their long day's fishing far out to sea and up and down the coast, and were leisurely wheeling, scouting, and sailing shoreward to their homes among the crags.

Nothing else stirred or broke the stillness, except the sea-the imperial, the insatiable, the eternal sea! – the sea that for ever chafes and storms, and seeks to eat away or overwhelm the land because it spurns and writhes under its function of merely filling up the hollows of earth and balancing the volume of the world.

If all the solids of the earth were turned smooth in the mighty lathe that drives the earth round its axis, then water would be supreme, and this planet would be a polished, argent sphere, flashing through interspaces between clouds as it spun and flew along the orbit of gold woven of light for it by the sun.

Day and night the waters work without ceasing to overwhelm the earth. Day and night the torrents tear down the sand and boulders and trees of the mountains and fling them into the hidden hollows at the mouths of rivers. All the deltas of the world are offerings of the torrents and rivers towards carrying out the grand scheme of the oceans metropolitan. Pool and tarn and lake and inland sea, and remotest waters that touch undreamed-of isles, are daily and nightly fretting or tearing away the uncomplaining shores.

The sun and moon and winds are leagued against the pastoral earth. Daily the sun transports millions of tons of water from the harmless plains of deep-sea waters, and the wind takes these vaporous foes of the land and hurls them on the loftiest mountains, so that they may gain the greatest speed and rending force and carrying power as they fly back with spoils of earth to their old friend the sea. The sun splits the cliffs with heat, and the winds lend fascines to the waves, so that the injured portions may be reached, cast down, and another line of defence destroyed.

Lest the sun and the winds and the rivers are not enough to accomplish the ruin of man's territory, the moon-the gentle moon of poets and lovers-the cold, frigid moon helps with that coldest of all things on earth, the glacier, to complete the havoc. The power of the wind is but partial, intermittent; that of the moon and the glacier general, everlasting. The tides are the heights commanding the outworks of the land; the moving fields of ice unsuspected traitors, in the garb of solidity, sapping the walls of the citadel.

Even now the list of enemies is not complete. In the core and centre of the earth itself the arch-traitor, the mightiest traitor of all, lies, gravitation, which should naturally be the lieutenant of the denser of the two combatants. This is the most relentless, the most unmerciful leveller of all. It seizes with equal avidity upon the moat that the sunlight only makes visible, and the loosened but yet unapportioned cliff of a thousand feet high, cut by the river of a Mexican cañon.

Electricity, the irresistible enemy and imponderable slave of man, is on the side of the waters. It binds the vapours of the oceans together, and scatters them when it reaches the hills. It rends trees and stones and buildings, and flings them down ready for easy porterage by the more methodical water.

One of these forces that ought to be on the side of the land, gravitation, has deserted its own side for the water. It is one force, and is universally operative. One of these forces that ought to be on the side of the sea has deserted its own side for the land. It is one force, but it operates through hundreds of thousands, of millions of agents; it is the coral insect. It transmutes the waters which give life and sustenance to it into land against which the waters war. It raises up an island where there ought to be two hundred fathoms of water. It uses up more material in making islands than all the great rivers put together deposit at their deltas.

The only loyal servant land has is the central fire. It can throw up in one minute as much as all the others can tear down in a hundred years. The central fire pushes an ocean aside with as much ease as a wave raises a boat. It throws up the Andes in less time than it took the sea, with its allied forces, to rob England of Lyonnesse.

The coral insect and the central fire, the least and the hugest of the world's working forces, are more than equal to all the forces arrayed against them, and are the humble and the terrible friends of man.

Here, by this gloomy sea, no coral insect toiled, no earthquake heaved, no volcano thrust up a flaming torch of hope to heaven. Here the enemies of the land had no foe to encounter but the resolute indifference of the veteran cliffs. Here the sea, and the tides, and the winds, and gravitation worked on unchallenged by active resistance. Year after year, almost imperceptible pieces of cliff fell, were engulfed. Year after year the incessant action of the waves was gnawing deeper and deeper into the heart of the land. Year after year the adamantine substance of the Black Rock was diminishing, though in a generation no man noticed a change in the Rock, and few a change in the cliff.

This coast was honeycombed with caves. In the summer time, when the weather was fine, pleasure parties put off from Kilcash for "The Caves," as the district in which they were to be found was, with peculiar want of fancy or imagination in so imaginative a race, called by the inhabitants of the village.

The region of caves was all to the east of Kilcash, and extended along several miles of coast. Some caves were wide-mouthed, shallow, low, uninteresting; others spacious, lofty, ramified. In order to excite curiosity and inspire awe, some were reported to be unexplored; others had legends. Others had sad stories of truthful tragedies. It was safe to enter one at low water only, and safe to stay no longer than a few minutes because of the stalactites. If you wished to see another, and not stay in its black, chill maw for four hours, you must go on the top of high water, and stay no more than a good hour. To a third you might go at any time of tide. To a fourth only on the last of the lowest of neaps, and then be quick and get away again. To a sixth only on the top of spring tides. To one, and one only, which might be entered at any state of tide-Never.

This last cave, which not the boldest fisherman in Kilcash or the next village to it would face, was called the Whale's Mouth, and ran in under the Black Rock.

The opening of the Whale's Mouth is on the south-west or extreme seaward side of the Black Rock. At full of spring tide the entrance to it is about fifteen feet high and of equal breadth. The difference between high and low water here is about fifteen feet. Hence, at lowest of spring tide, the measurement from the surface of the water to the roof at the entrance would be thirty feet.

At the entrance of the Whale's Mouth the outline of the Black Rock is blunt, abrupt, solid. The base of the Rock is never uncovered by water. The wash of the long roller of the Atlantic is always against its sides. The general formation of the cave is that of a square. It is more like the hideous distended jaws of the crocodile than of the whale; but the reason for calling it the Whale's Mouth does not lie in the immediate entrance, but further on, in the roof of the forbidding cavern.

For years no one had dared to enter that cavern. Along the coast were stories of two boats which had ventured in. Not a plank, oar, or man of the first had ever been seen again. Part of the boat, oars, and crew of the other had been seen for one brief moment, smashed and mangled, and then disappeared for ever. What the fate of the former was no one could tell; what the fate of the latter had been all knew.

As far as could be seen into the cave from the outside, there was nothing dangerous or remarkable-looking about it. It declined slightly in height, but the walls did not seem to come any closer together. There was no rock or obstruction of any kind visible in it. The long, even swells rolled in unbroken; but after each wave passed out of sight there was a deep tumultuous explosion, and a strange, loud sound of rushing and struggling water. There was no weakening or gradual dispersion of the force of the wave. Its power seemed shattered and absorbed at once.

This cave had another mysterious and disquieting faculty. It absorbed and discharged more water than could be accounted for by any other supposition but that inside somewhere it expanded prodigiously. At flood tide the water went in eagerly; at ebb tide it ran out at so quick a rate, many believed a large body of fresh water, or foreign water of some other kind, found a way into it. On flood tide, the fishermen gave it a wide berth, lest by any chance or mischance they might be sucked into it.

Often curious people passing by at flood tide threw overboard articles that would float, and watched them as they were slowly but surely drawn into that gaping vault. There was no doubt they were swallowed by that inky void, but they never were seen by man again. Some of the simpler people believed that there was a whirlpool at the end of the cave, and that if this whirlpool took anything down, it never gave that thing, or sign or token of that thing, back again. People on these shores attach miraculous powers to whirlpools. There are no whirlpools of consequence in the neighbourhood, but terrible stories of them had reached the people, and filled the simple folk with superstitious awe.

In this shunned and mysterious cell the rock-monster had its home. On the sea it was harmless. But no one durst enter its haunt, and yet this was not wholly from fear of the monster, but of the place itself, with its loud explosions, its unaccountable indraught and outflow, and the unreturning dead of the two boats. The monster had its home in the cave; but his sphere of action was on the vast plain of rock above.

O'Hanlon and O'Brien succeeded in crossing the Black Rock without accident, and were drawing near the Hole.

"It was there," said O'Hanlon, pointing-"just there. I saw him as plain as ever eyes saw anything."

O'Hanlon pointed to the north-east, or shore side, of the Hole.

The two men drew nearer, and then, pausing a moment to fix their hats firmly on their heads and grasp one another round the waist, crept cautiously forward until they stood on the brink of the Hole. They looked down.

The Hole was almost square, about thirty feet by thirty feet, and narrowing irregularly as it went down to about half that size. The depth from where the two stood to the surface of the water below was thirty-five feet.

The bottom of the Hole was naturally scant of light, and the light now in the sky was poor and thin.

The sides were almost smooth, and at the bottom of the funnel the angles a little rounded in. The rock upon which they stood seemed to be about twenty-five feet thick, and the free space between the bottom of the rock and the surface of the water ten feet. Thus the height of the cave at the Hole was at the present time of tide-half-tide flood-ten feet.

At the bottom of the Hole the water was no longer smooth, even quiet, but broken and turbid, opaque, and mantled with froth. Every wave that entered the vestibule of the cave swung the uneasy seething mass inward, to return in a few seconds on the back-wash. But the froth did not come back every time; it crept further on, until at the third wave the froth disappeared inward, to be succeeded by other froth moving at the same rate.

It made one giddy to look for any length of time. After a few minutes both men drew back by mutual consent.

"No mortal man could live down there for five minutes," said O'Hanlon, with a shiver.

"No," said O'Brien, with a laugh, "or ghost either, for that matter. But, I say, O'Hanlon, what cool and roomy lodging it would afford to all the Fishery Commissioners in the United Kingdoms!"

"This is no place for joking," said O'Hanlon, uneasily. "Let us get back. I am sick of this place."

"Wait a minute," said O'Brien. "As this wretched man Fahey was seen here both in the flesh and the spirit for the last time, let me read the documents he left in your charge."

He put his hand in his pocket, and read the papers by the fast-fading light.

"Come on. Take care you don't slip. The papers are simple enough on the surface, except No. 11. Shall I read it to you?"

"Ay," answered O'Hanlon absently.

It was nothing to him. He was devoting his thoughts to getting safely over this greasy, clammy, slippery surface.

O'Brien read out slowly:

"'Memorandum. – Rise 15·6 lowest. At lowest minute of lowest forward with all might undaunted. The foregoing refers to sculls. With only one skull any lowest or any last quarter; but great forward pluck required for this. In both cases (of course!) left.'

"Well," said O'Brien, "I confess I can't make anything of it. Can you?"

"No," said the other listlessly.

They had now reached the foot of the path.

"I think it's rubbish. What do you say?"

"Unmitigated rubbish."

"What, for instance, can he mean by 'skull' and 'sculls' with a line under each? The writing is that of a man of some education."

"Oh, yes-he was a man of some education."

O'Brien paused in his walk, and cried:

"Stop! I think I have an idea."

"Eh?"

"From what you know of this man, do you think he could spell a word of ordinary English?"

"I should think so."