CHAPTER V

THE CLOSED GATE

My father always tried to meet a surprise with calm acceptance as though it was a thing which he had been anticipating. This was part of his "technique of philosophy", as he termed it, though the phrase was sufficiently incomprehensible to me as a boy. So when, the next morning, I tracked him right into his hiding-place, pushing under the bushes and finding the hole which led down into the secret passage, he didn't exclaim his astonishment, but hearing me stumbling my way through the unexplored blackness he opened the shutter of the dark lantern he was carrying, and said in a matter-of-fact voice, "Come along, Tommy; I'll show you."

It was I who was taken aback, for he had been hidden from me and the sudden light surprised me. I uttered a feeble "Oh!" and took his hand.

The passage was wide enough for two, and high enough for a short man like my father to walk upright in. The lantern lit up at intervals the stays and beams which supported the tunnel, showing it to be a man-made affair. Presently we came to a flight of roughly levelled steps built up with stakes into the earth, and at the end there was a steep drop into darkness, with a rope ladder disappearing into the gulf. My father began to descend, and I followed. It was a longish shaft, and I was glad to reach the bottom. I knew at once that we were in a different sort of place now, for the sound of our feet echoed resonantly, and the walls were running with moisture, and there were no supports along the sides.

As we proceeded, the tunnel gradually widened, twisting its way downward at a gentle slope, and after a while the floor became slippery with sea-weed, showing that the tide flowed in at full. In fact, before we had reached the end of the journey we were wading in water up to our knees, for it was still fairly early, about nine or ten, and the tide was only at half ebb. And then my father set his lantern in a niche high up in the wall, and said, "Well, what do you make of it, Tommy?"

I looked about me in the dim light, and before me stood a flat wall of rock, split in two, which I recognized at once as the back of the gateway that opened into Ebb-Tide Cave, though whether I should have recognized it so quickly if it hadn't been for my observations of the day before I don't know. I said with something of my father's nonchalance, "This opens into Ebb-Tide Pool."

Even my father couldn't quite screen his surprise, for he wasn't to know how I had arrived at my knowledge.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, "you're very cute, Tommy."

"But look!" I said, and pointed to the twin doors of rock.

"But how do you know it opens?" he asked.

"I know," I said.

"But how?"

"It must do," I said doggedly; for I couldn't tell him how I knew.

"Yes, it does," he said at length, "but I haven't found out how it's done."

We didn't find out that morning either, though we probed every nook and cranny, questing for the secret bolt or spring or whatever it might be which would set that great gate swinging. My father had been over the whole ground before, and I found nothing new to solve the mystery. I thought I had made a discovery when, scrambling up to the niche where my father had set the lantern, I found I could thrust my arm deep into a cranny full of rotting refuse. I cleared it away, but couldn't reach to the end of the little crevice. I pointed it out to my father; but he had explored it before without result. We came away at last, and emerging into the bracken blinked at the blinding daylight.

"That's that," said my father, and warned me not to prowl there too often. But I knew what I meant to do.

For the rest of the day I reserved my strength, knowing I had been too tired the evening before to do myself justice with the knife; so I lay out on the cliff and bathed in the glorious sun that still beat splendidly from the blue, and before returning I tumbled into the sea for a single plunge, and reached the inn with a magnificent appetite and feeling fit for the evening's encounter.

To describe the combat in all its details would take too much space, for it was long and eventful. I tried every artifice my father had taught me, hoping to make my drive without betraying my secret, but he held me in play too surely, and though I managed to parry his attacks I scored no hits myself. As we drew apart for a rest, both panting from the exertion, he asked, "Had enough, Tommy?" And I answered carelessly, "No, I'm fit for another turn," and we closed again.

I ran in quickly this time, intending to put the trick into immediate play. As I expected, he shot out his left hand and caught my wrist, and I saw the word "Rash!" forming on his lips, but before it was uttered I slipped the knife into my left hand, and with a sideways jab crushed the paper weapon against his breast, feeling my hand go thump against his ribs as though I had struck him.

"Well!" he exclaimed, and dropped his own weapon to the floor. "Well!" He sat down. "I _have_ seen it done, Tommy; but where did you learn it?"

I evaded the answer by dancing about him and exclaiming, "The knife, the knife, I've won the knife!"

"And you shall have it," he said.

And so at last the shining prize lay in my hand, and with fond fingers I felt along its delicious edge. When should I need to use it in earnest, I wondered.

I turned a radiant face to my father, and throwing an arm round him I kissed him vigorously, and drawing away said, "If I ever meet Shadow-of-Fear, or the old witch, Bite-in-the Dark...." I didn't need to finish the sentence, but slipping the knife from my upraised right hand into my left I practised the feint in mid air. My father smiled and said, "Don't be satisfied yet, Tommy. You're not a man till you can use a pistol too."

In honour of the occasion he told me a wonderful tale that night; and I sat at his feet long after the sun had gone down, and the window had become a black square, and the strange voices of the night were ominous of dark and secret things, listening to my father as he told a story of desperate smuggling and battles and arrests and rescues. The story, I remember, was particularly vivid, because it was set locally, and all the caves and creeks I knew and the old tumble-down jetty became alive with savage men; and especially I remember how the gate at Ebb-Tide Cave gave up its secret, swinging away from the wall, and leaving revealed a passage into the cliff. And one cruel incident dwelt in my memory for many a day because of my father's vivid description. It was an old smuggler's vengeance on a traitor, the wretched victim being torn asunder between earth and sea, with a rope around him from a cave roof, and a heavy log tied to his feet and floating on the water, weighing him down to a lingering death as the tide slowly ebbed.

When at last I crept into bed it was a real comfort to me to slip the knife under my pillow, for the tale had been unusually stirring, and my mind was in a strange confusion. More than once I awoke startled, and felt swiftly under the pillow for the reassuring touch of my newly-won friend; for it may have been the effect of my father's story, or it may have been an uneasy premonition of coming things, but I seemed to hear a sort of stifled shuffling through the house, and knockings and smothered voices; and the trees outside shook unsettled branches, and a swaying bough kept brushing furtively across the pane.

Once I awoke with a greater start than ever, and sat bolt upright listening intently, every nerve strained and alert. It was unmistakable; there was something creeping in the room. For a moment I thought a hand touched my neck, but it was only my hair stiffening. I took control of myself, though my heart thumped deafeningly, and quietly reached a hand out for my father. He wasn't there. At this I think I broke down, and cried terribly, "Dad, dad, where are you?"

"Heigh, Tommy, what?" he answered quickly, and was at my side.

"Oh, daddy," I said, trying to hold back my tears, "I was frightened."

"Why, you have your knife," he tried to pacify me.

"But where were you?" I asked.

"Why," he answered easily, "I must have fallen asleep in my chair."

It wasn't till morning that I remembered I had already felt him in bed beside me. Waking with that thought in the grey dawn I told myself he had been listening through the floor.