Smugglers!

by Karen King

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  Now what were we going to do? The water level was still rising fast.

  Keep calm. Keep a clear head. Think! I wondered what Vince Bronson, my favourite FBI agent would do. Whenever he and his sidekick Mac got in a dangerous situation he’d say there was always a way out, you just had to think of it. Well, right now I needed to think of it pretty quick.

  ‘Should we try and swim?’ Max was trying desperately hard not to cry.

  The same thought had occurred to me. I hesitated, wondering how well Max could swim and whether I was a strong enough swimmer to take us both to safety if he got into difficulties. I could swim pretty well and had my lifesaver’s badge, but we’d be taking a big risk. There were lots of rocks and boulders under the water that we might knock against and injure ourselves. And there was no way of telling how strong the current was or how deep the water was outside the cave.

  Keep calm. I took some deep breaths, inhaling the air down into my chest, then exhaling out very slowly, like I’d seen my mom do when she had a panic attack. Max was a kid, I had to stay strong and get us both safely out of here.

  ‘Amy!’ Max screamed and got to his feet as another wave surged into the cave. We both knew that this one would raise the water level to the height of the ledge.

  ‘Let’s stand on that boulder!’ I shouted, pointing to a big boulder that was against the wall at the end of the ledge. As I climbed onto it I lost my footing, slipped, reached out for the cave wall to support myself and found my hand floundering around in empty space. Max grabbed my arm and I managed to steady myself.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, climbing down from the boulder. It was then that I noticed a small space behind it. I tugged at the boulder, trying to pull it away from the wall, but it was too heavy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Max asked.

  ‘There’s a gap behind this boulder. It could be the secret tunnel,’ I told him. ‘Help me to move it, quick!’

  We both pushed, pulled and tugged at the boulder, moving it little by little away from the wall. And there, right behind it, was a hole. It was big enough for us to stand up in.

  ‘It’s the tunnel!’ Max exclaimed.

  I hoped it was. I grabbed Max’s arm and pulled him into the opening, just as the water reached the ledge and submerged it.

  Chapter 3

  The Tunnel

  We were in a dark, musty tunnel. It was terrifying. We had no idea where it led but, as it was our only way of escaping from the flooded cave, we had to go along it. Max grabbed my hand and held it tight. I could feel his fear, the same fear that was gnawing at me. Just keep going, I told myself. If this is the smugglers’ secret tunnel then it will lead us to safety.

  And if it wasn’t? What if it led us back out to the flooded caves below?

  I shook the thought from my mind. The tunnel was getting steeper and steeper, it was taking us upwards, higher into the cliff, not back down to it.

  ‘I wish we had a torch.’ Max’s voice sounded wobbly in the darkness.

  So did I. Why hadn’t I at least slipped my penlight into my pocket when I came out? Because I thought I was only going for a walk along the beach, I reminded myself. I wasn’t planning on getting trapped in flooded smugglers’ caves.

  It was starting to get lighter in the tunnel, and eventually we stepped out into a small cave. A couple of broken crates were strewn over in one corner.

  ‘Do you think some smugglers left those?’ Max asked.

  I checked them out. They were both empty, but there was something written in a foreign language on the side of one of them. It was just one word, but it could give us a clue as to what had been inside the crates. I studied it carefully.

  ‘Do you know what it says?’ asked Max.

  ‘No, but I think it’s Spanish,’ I replied. My buddy Rory has a Spanish cousin who came to stay with him last summer and had taught us a few words. Not that I recognised this one, but it had a sort of Spanish look to it.

  ‘So, this is it? The secret cave my great-great grandad and his smuggler friends used. Wow! I can’t believe it!’ His fear gone, Max was lookng around, wide-eyed.

  I couldn’t believe it either! I was actually inside a real smugglers’ secret cave. Incredible. Wait until Rory, Chloe and my other buddies back at home heard about this. I checked my cellphone. Still no reception, but at least I could take photos with it.

  First, I took a photo of the word painted on the crate. The cellphone camera wouldn’t focus properly in the dark and the photo was a bit blurred, but I thought I could just make out what it said. ‘I’ll see if I can find out what it means on an Internet translation site,’ I told Max. Then, I took a few snaps of the inside of the cave and saved them in a folder, which I called ‘Smugglers’, so I could find them easily when I wanted to email them over to my buddies. I moved the other photos I’d taken of the cave into the same folder.

  Max took some snaps with his phone too. Then, we sat down on the crates.

  ‘What if the sea comes into the tunnel?’ Max asked, glancing towards the opening.

  ‘It won’t, the tunnel goes upwards, remember? There might be a pool of water on the ledge, but that’ll be it. Anyway, look around, you can see this cave is dry. I bet the smugglers used it to store their goods.’

  ‘I wonder if my great-great-grandad ever had to wait in this cave for the tide to go out?’ Max said. ‘Maybe he even sat on these crates.’

  ‘Maybe, but I bet the smugglers knew all about the tide times and made sure they didn’t get trapped,’ I replied. But his words had given me an idea. What if the coastguards had chased the smugglers into this cave? Was there another escape route? I checked out the cave, looking for an opening in the wall.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Max.

  ‘I’m just wondering if there was another way out of this cave,’ I told him. ‘What if the coastguards chased the smugglers and they escaped into the secret tunnel? They couldn’t stay here forever, could they? They’d be trapped. All the coastguards would have to do is wait in the cave below for them to come out.’

  ‘So you think there might be another secret tunnel that the smugglers could sneak down without the coastguards knowing?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ Max started looking around the cave too, but we didn’t find any other opening. I even moved the crates in case there was a concealed tunnel beneath them. There wasn’t, but the search did reveal a sheet of newspaper. I bent down to pick it up.

  ‘I wonder what those nails are for,’ Max said.

  He was staring at some thick, long, black nails sticking out of one of the walls. I’d never seen nails like it. They were about twelve centimetres long, at least a centimetre wide, and looked really strong.

  I went over for a closer look. ‘It must have taken some force to knock them in. And see, they go all the way up to the ceiling.’ The nails had been hammered into the wall, right to the top of the cave, and there was something weird about how they were positioned.

  ‘They form a kind of zigzag pattern up the wall,’ Max said.

  He was right, they had been hammered in like a sort of wonky ladder.

  A ladder.

  That was it! I folded the sheet of newspaper and put it in my pocket, then walked over to the wall and stepped onto the bottom nail, grabbing the one above for support. The nails seemed firm enough. I stepped onto the next one, again pulling myself up by the nail above it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Max.

  ‘I think these nails have been put here as a ladder, to help the smugglers climb the wall and escape the coastguards,’ I told him. ‘There must be some sort of opening at the roof.’

  Using the nails as foot and handholds, I scaled the wall, willing myself not to look down.

  ‘Be care
ful. They must have been there for years, so they might be loose,’ Max warned me.

  That thought had already occurred to me, so I concentrated on making sure I got a secure grip on each nail before I moved onto the next one. Thank goodness I was wearing trainers with a good grip on the sole.

  Halfway up, a nail wobbled beneath my feet and I almost lost my footing. For a split second I thought I was going to fall, but somehow I managed to regain my balance. I leant my trembling body flat against the wall, balancing on my toes to ease my weight off the loose nail. Why had I attempted this? If I fell I would probably break my back on the hard cave floor. Why hadn’t I simply waited for the tide to go out again?

  ‘Amy!’ I could hear the panic in Max’s voice.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I told him. ‘I’m okay!’

  I forced myself to keep calm, and reached for the next nail to continue my climb.

  Max was quiet now, and I knew that he was watching me anxiously from below, praying that I wouldn’t fall. So was I.

  Thankfully, I reached the top without further trouble. I looked up and saw a manhole cover above my head. Making sure both my feet were placed securely on the long nails, I gripped another nail with my right hand to balance myself, then reached up and pushed the cover. To my surprise it moved. I pushed it again, this time lifting it to the right. A shaft of light beamed in. One more push and the cover was completely off.

  I hauled myself up and poked my head through the hole, which was plenty big enough for a man to get through. Around me was an expanse of shrubby grass and bushes.

  ‘It leads to the cliff top!’ I shouted to Max. ‘The smugglers must have escaped from here.’

  I glanced downwards to see Max already scaling the wall.

  ‘Be careful. Make sure you get a good grip and watch out for the wobbly nail,’ I shouted to him.

  ‘If they took your weight, they’ll take mine!’ he retorted.

  I wriggled out of the hole, pulling myself onto the grass beside it, laid on my belly and anxiously watched Max’s progress up the wall. If he fell, he could do himself a serious injury.

  ‘The next nail’s the wobbly one!’ I warned him.

  He stepped on it with his toes as I had done, gripping the two nails above. As he neared the top, I wriggled out further, ready to lend a hand if he needed it. It was a good job I did because as Max reached out to grip the edge of the hole he lost his footing. I grabbed his arm and hauled him onto the grass beside me.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice a little shaky.

  ‘Can’t have you breaking your neck, can we? I’d only get the blame,’ I said, ruffling his hair.

  He grinned. ‘I wonder if my great-great-grandad escaped like this.’

  ‘If he did I bet he was more sensible than us and wore gloves.’ I flexed my hands, which were sore from gripping the nails. Then, I closed the cover and stood up. No one walking along the cliffs would imagine that the manhole cover led to a secret cave. ‘Judging by how loose this cover is it’s been used pretty regularly,’ I said. ‘Maybe some smugglers are still using that cave.’

  Then, I remembered the sheet of newspaper I’d shoved in my pocket. I took it out and opened it up. It was the front page of a popular tabloid, and it was dated a month ago.

  ‘I’m right! The cave has been used recently and this newspaper proves it,’ I told Max.

  Max stared incredulously at the paper, then up at me, his eyes wide. ‘You mean we’ve got smugglers in Little Cragg?’

  ‘Seems that way,’ I told him. ‘And I’m going to find out who they are and what they’re smuggling.’

  It looked like Amy Carter, super-sleuth, had another mystery to solve.

  Chapter 4

  Suspects

  It wasn’t until we were almost home that I remembered the light I’d seen flashing the night before. I told Max about it.

  ‘Maybe it was the smugglers. The light could be a signal sent from one smuggler to another!’

  Hang on … as soon as the light had started flashing I’d heard Mr Hodgkin go out, and Gran said he hadn’t returned until five thirty this morning. What if Mr Hodgkin was a smuggler? Badger watching could be a cover. ‘I reckon I know who the smuggler might be. Mr Hodgkin,’ I said.

  ‘Auntie Sue’s guest? The badger watcher?’ Max had lived next door to Gran all his life and thought of her as family. It had been weird when I’d first heard him call her ‘Auntie Sue’, but I’d got used to it now.

  I nodded. ‘He looks real shifty and I don’t buy that badger-watching storyline at all. He doesn’t seem like an animal lover to me. He doesn’t even bother with Fluffy.’

  ‘You’re always thinking your Gran’s guests are up to something,’ Max pointed out.

  ‘That’s ’cos they usually are,’ I retorted. One of Gran’s guests had been responsible for dognapping Fluffy and another one had tried to buy Old Joe out of his cottage because he thought Roman relics were buried there.

  ‘I didn’t think there were any smugglers nowadays.’ Max still sounded doubtful. ‘What sort of stuff do they smuggle? Mum said my great-great-grandad used to smuggle tobacco and rum. She said no one knew back then how bad drinking alcohol and smoking was for you.

  I shrugged. ‘Dunno, but smuggling still goes on. I’ve read about it. I’ll check it out on the Internet when I get back to Gran’s.’

  But, my plans to spend the afternoon surfing the Internet for information on smuggling were scuppered by Gran. She sent me out after lunch on some errands and looked so cross that I didn’t dare protest. Mr Hodgkin was still in bed, and Miss Pearce had whisked Mr Winkleberry off to some local festival where she was running a market stall selling her ‘designer seconds’. I’m not sure which had upset Gran the most, but she looked like she was about to spit teeth.

  Most of the stuff Gran wanted was from the corner store, so I left that until last and headed into town to drop off her dry cleaning and post her letters. I couldn’t resist popping into Exotic Wares on the way. I’d discovered the shop a couple of weeks ago and loved the cheap, unusual clothes and jewellery there. Marissa, the woman who ran the shop, was just as exotic-looking as the things she sold, with her dragonfly tattoo on her shoulder and the colourful vests and skirts she wore.

  She smiled as I walked in. ‘Hello, Amy. How lucky that you’ve come in today. I’ve just had a new delivery of some really lovely stuff. Want to take a look?’ Her long, wavy, dark hair was pulled back off her face to reveal bright turquoise and yellow feather earrings dangling from her ears, and a matching feather pendant, which hung on a black cord around her neck. They looked real neat against her coffee-coloured skin. I wasn’t really one for jewellery myself, but they were just the sort of thing my buddy Chloe would love and she had a birthday coming up soon.

  ‘You bet,’ I nodded. ‘Have you got any more of those?’

  ‘Yes, they come in three different colours. They’re on that stand over there.’ Marissa pointed to a stand in the corner of the shop. ‘Have a browse. I’ve another box of stuff in the back, which I haven’t had time to sort out yet. I’ll bring it through in a minute.’

  ‘Want me to help you unpack it?’ I offered.

  ‘That’d be great. Thanks, Amy.’

  The feather earrings and pendants came in turquoise and yellow, red and green and purple and orange. There was lots of other lovely stuff too. Marissa told me she imported the goods from abroad, mainly Asia. That’s why they were all so pretty and unusual.

  ‘Here we are.’ Marissa came out of the back of the shop carrying a big cardboard box. ‘Take a look through this.’

  The box was full of colourful scarves and skirts, bags, sandals and jewellery. It was no wonder Marissa’s shop was so popular.

  A group of tourists crowded through the door, and Marissa greeted them with a smile. ‘Feel free to look around and give me a shout
if you need any help,’ she told them.

  One of the women noticed us looking through the box and came over to see what was in it. The others followed and they were all soon pouring over the goods, exclaiming with delight.

  ‘I haven’t marked them up yet,’ Marissa told them. ‘If you want something, I’ll have to check the price for you.’

  I could see that she was busy so I thought I’d better go. ‘Can you save me a pair of the red and green feather earrings?’ I asked. ‘I’ll pick them up tomorrow.’

  Marissa nodded, ‘No problem, Amy.’

  I picked up my bag and set off to do Gran’s errands. The dry cleaners and the post office were further down the hill, on the other side of the street, so I went to them first. Then, I dropped into the library to get a book on smuggling.

  I found quite a few books on smuggling – it seemed Cornwall was proud of its smuggling past. Max was right, back then it was usually alcohol and tobacco that were smuggled because the government placed such a high tax on them that people couldn’t afford to buy them. I chose the book that seemed to have the most information and then set off home, stopping at the corner store to get Gran’s groceries.

  Gran seemed much happier when I returned, thank goodness. Mr Winkleberry was back and (much to Gran’s delight) was grumbling about how boring the market had been, how self-opinionated Miss Pearce was and how she’d tried to persuade him to stay for the day, but he’d refused and caught the train home. Mr Hodgkin had finally got out of bed and was in the backyard, smoking one of his ‘roll-ups’ (Gran didn’t allow smoking in the house). He was a bit of a shifty-looking character: tall, lanky and unshaven, and dressed completely in black. To me, he seemed just the sort of person who’d be a smuggler.

  I gave Gran her groceries and then went straight up to my room to surf the net. Gran didn’t have the Internet – or even a computer come to that – but Max’s folks had given me the password for their wireless router, so I could go through that to access the Internet on my laptop. I glanced through the book I’d got from the library while I waited for the computer to boot up.