by Edith Nesbit
And now, before Alan had time to obey the ready Clifford and catch her other arm, Madeline’s arms went up over her head and she sank out of sight.
I need not assure the reader that Clifford held on as long as he could, but all was vain. You can’t hold a great girl like that up with one hand. As it was, Clifford’s arm was very near disconnected at the socket.
“Ow!” said Madeline just before her mouth went under the dead leaves. The last that was seen of her was the ends of her hair. Then they vanished with a quiet rustling of the leaves.
And there we were in the wood — just three of us — who had been four, and Madeline had disappeared into the ground.
We listened in vain for the sickening thud that always happens in newspapers when people fall from any height. There was none, and the leaves seemed to have closed over her disappearance like waves. Only some of the damp leaves turned up from underneath marked the fatal spot.
We hastened to clear away the leaves in armfuls. They were very thick indeed. The voice of Madeline suddenly yelling just underneath us made us stop for a minute, and then go on harder than ever, replying to the buried one by whispered yells, so as not to be heard by the Serious Sergeants, of “All right,”
“You hold on,” and “We’re coming.”
We had lifted away quite a lot of leaves — you see they kept tumbling in from the sides and choking up the hollow as fast as we made it — before we found the hole in the ground through which our cousin had happened to sift.
It was just about big enough for a man to get through, not more.
“Are you hurt? Where are you? Can’t you get out?” we now said all at once.
And Madeline replied from the depths of the earth: “I’m here. No, of course I can’t. It’s all soft leaves. I’m not hurt. I wish you’d come down and help me.”
Clifford’s ambition is, of course, to be the bravest brave that was ever tolled for, but he owns that he said:
“Is it far? Far down, I mean.”
“Oh, no,” said Madeline; “you can drop quite easily.”
So then he put his boots into the hole and followed them. No hero can do more.
He felt about with his feet and found stones sticking out of the side of the hole that he might have climbed down by, but he thought it safest to drop from the top in case dropping became needful further down, at some spot where he couldn’t get a good grip and swing clear.
You would not believe how little he liked to do that drop into the unknown, and perhaps on to Madeline, though he had already shouted “Stand from under!” before inserting his boots.
Well, no matter what his feelings, he did drop — and it was a much longer drop than he expected, though I don’t suppose Madeline meant to deceive. He fell quite soft, into a heap of dry leaves and crisp twigs. And when he had recovered from all fours, which is what he landed on, owing to the springiness of the leaves, he stood up and felt for solid ground and found it.
Then he said, “Where are you?” and Madeline said, “Here, of course,” and he struck a match and lit a bit of candle. All us boys always carry matches and candles. You never know. And how true that was in this case!
The unintending explorers found themselves not, of course, in a serpent’s lair, nor even, which Clifford had also thought of, a bear-pit long disused since the days in History when they used to bait them. No! it was better than that by long chalks. It was, quite really and truly and with no nonsense about it, a cave. It arched up over our heads about as high as a ceiling, and quite as white. The floor, except where the leaves had fallen through the hole, and heaped up under it, for countless ages, was covered with smooth sand. And it was large — not just a hole-and-corner sort of cave, but a big cavern that stretched out behind us and before us, like a winding underground tunnel.
“I want to get out,” said Madeline.
“I daresay you do,” said Clifford brightly, and he looked up at the roof of the cave where the hole was that we had come down by. Of course it was far beyond our reach.
“Hi!” was now heard to be being shouted by Olive and Alan above, “what is it?”
“It’s a cave,” said Clifford, “a jolly big one.”
“I say — I’m on,” remarked Alan, and as the hole shut up I knew he had put his boots into it.
“You can’t get out again,” I shouted — but too late. His boots and his body had shut off our voices from his ears. Next moment he stood beside us — on all fours.
“Stay where you are,” Clifford yelled up to Olive. “Look here — you mustn’t come down. I’m sorry for you — you’ll have to break it to Uncle, and make him send ropes and rescues. I should wait till the Serious Sergeants are out of the way. We shall be all right here.”
She said it was perfectly beastly of us, shoving it on to her, but Clifford explained patiently how we couldn’t help it. We got her to roll most of the grub up in her pinafore and drop it down the hole, in case of the Serious Sergeants being a long time going.
“And now,” said Clifford, “I vote we explore a bit.” We explored. It was like the Hampton Court Maze, only instead of being hot sun and grit under your feet it was quite cool, and soft sand and very dark. And it went on and on. It was rather like the crypt of Rochester Cathedral, only the pillars were too big and not carved at all. There were rough arches in the walls here and there, and flat stones inside, something like the tombs in a church, only much rougher. And we went on and on and on and it was most interesting — even Madeline said so. We ate our grub in one of the tomblike arches — and there was a stream running along through the sand in one place, that we drank out of like dogs.
And then we suddenly remembered that it was time to get back to the hole we had tumbled in by, so as to be ready to be hauled up by ropes and royally rowed, which we knew must be, however undeserved. You will hardly believe that Clifford had quite forgotten the injurious hat-stand, and the others said afterwards that they had too.
“We came round by that pillar,” said Madeline.
“It is the first to the left,” Alan said.
And perhaps it was. Only what happened is exactly what you are expecting, so why waste pages and pages in working you up to it, as if I was a grown-up author? The plainest words are the best, as some great author beautifully observes. And no decorated words can express our horrible state better than these plain ones: We were lost in those caves, and we could not find the hole we had come in by.
The author begs you to stop and make despairing reflections, which you can do quite as well as us, especially when you learn that we had not thought we should be lost, and so had spent the candles with the freedom of a royal ransom.
There was about two inches of candle left; it was in two pieces.
When we had owned that we were lost, and I am sorry to say blamed each other, which I will draw a veil and dots over, Clifford assumed command.
“Out with the candle,” he said, and suiting the action to the word he blew.
The darkness was like black velvet.
Madeline screamed.
“Don’t scream,” said Clifford patiently; “it won’t do any good and it makes your throat sore if you go on. Yes — certainly. Alan and I will sit on each side of you and hold your hands. There’s nothing to be afraid of. When they find we aren’t at the opening they’ll send down the butler or one of the footmen to hunt for us with stable lanterns.”
Clifford said this, but he did not altogether feel it.
We sat down in the sand and were silent.
“We’d better yell every now and then,” said Alan presently. I do really think Alan and Clifford behaved rather well. Madeline, also, might have been worse. She pinched our hands like mad, and burbled, but she did not yell. And the darkness went on being like black velvet.
We said poetry, and tried to tell each other tales, but it is difficult. If we had had more candle, of course, we wouldn’t have given up like that, but it is easier to sit in the velvet dark if you know you can light it up whene
ver you choose, than to have no candle-ends left for emergencies.
We explained this to Madeline so often that I think in the end she began to understand that there might be something in it.
And after a very long dark time, when our ears had got quite stiff inside with listening to hear if anyone was shouting to us from the hole, Alan suddenly said: “I see a light: sunlight, I think; let’s go to it — perhaps it’s another way out.” And then, like a true duffer, he struck a match. Clifford blew it out again at once, but of course we couldn’t see anything for ever so long afterwards.
But at last, by Alan explaining very carefully what he meant, that it was a streak of yellow light, we crawled towards it, and it got brighter and brighter like a star would if it was shaped like a line instead of a point (Euclid), and then Clifford, leading as usual, saw many stars because he bumped his head. It was against the wall of the cave we found, when we lighted a match, and the light proved, when darkness again appeared, to come from under the wall. So then we all knelt down and began to scratch away the sand with our hands, digging exactly as you have seen your fox terrier do when he is gardening in the flower-beds of your kind parents. And we dug and scratched, and the sand was very loose — and the light got larger. And the light was redder than we expected, and we thought what hours we must have been there, and that it was sunset.
And at last the hole looked big enough to crawl through. So we tried — but of course it wasn’t. So dog-digging was resumed. And at last it was big enough, and Clifford crawled through flat on his front like a serpent is doomed to go. He had to shut his eyes because of the sand, and when he felt he was through the hole he opened them again, and the light was gone, and all was black velvet once more. It was a baffling moment, and if Clifford’s voice was choky as he said, “Hold on,” and struck a match, I, for one, do not blame him. He lit his candle, and looked — and it was just another cave that the young explorers had so carefully dog-dug their way into.
“Come on,” said Clifford; “it’s just another cave, but there must be some one here because of the light.” So they came on, and we began to walk with one candle, hoping to find the human aid which is so often despaired of. But we couldn’t find any. And the candle was nearly done, when we heard a confused sound of voices very loud and echoing. They were quite close — just a turning or two off, I should say, and we could hear all their words very distinctly. But we could not understand them. And almost at the same moment I stumbled over something, and it was a pick-axe — very old and worn. And then the voices grew louder and there was a peal of fiend-like laughter.
Clifford caught Madeline’s arm. “Back!” he cried, “back to the dog-hole. They aren’t human aid: they’re cave-dwellers!”
We all backed for all we were worth, but we couldn’t find the dog-hole — of course. But there was an arch, and the roof or the sides or something had fallen in and made a mound that nearly reached the roof. We climbed up on this and lay flat on the top of the mound under the roof. There was just room.
I will not deceive the reader. Our hearts were not strangers to alarm. We knew all about cave-dwellers, you remember, and how fierce they were, and what, very likely, they ate — and about their axes (pick ones as well, no doubt). In fact I scorn to deny it — we were jolly frightened. Villa-dwellers we knew still existed, also lake-dwellers. Why not cave-dwellers who had gone on unsuspected by the busy world — like in Mr. Wells’s Time Machine — lurking underground? I did wish then that I hadn’t read the Time Machine.
We lay there flat and frightened, and we heard the voices go by and light shone on the stone roof just above our faces. And again we heard the voices and could not understand a single word they said.
They did not now sound fierce. The present writer thought their tones were more as if they were having one of their primeval jollifications than as if they were up to any of their dark cave-dwelling dodges. But he felt it would not do to trust to their feeling jolly at the moment. For, of course, they would never let anyone out who could tell the people outside about how the long-lost cave-dwellers still subsisted in their primitive way, unknown to the police, and most likely living by secret burglary when people were asleep in their beds.
You cannot look down when you are lying on your back on the top of a mound. But we heard the voices go by, and lights gleamed on the chalk roof that our faces were quite close to. Some of the dust had got into Clifford’s throat, and he wanted to cough more than he ever has in his life, and he was holding his breath and determining to choke rather than betray his presence in that silly way, when suddenly The Worst — once more — occurred. There was a rattling, rustling sound, a stifled cry, a scrabbling and a scratching, and one of us rolled from the top of the mound down its earthy sides. Need you ask which one? It was Madeline. And Clifford hastily rolled over on his front in time to see her land bang in the middle of the astonished cave-dwellers. He only saw very dimly, because her rolling had made clouds of dust. He scrambled down after her.
I do not say it was a hero’s deed. I only say it was better to do that and feel comfortable in your inside, than to wait where you were and be discovered later feeling like a skunk. And the end would be the same anyhow. As he scrambled he shouted, “All right, Mad, I’m coming!”
This was really all he did — but when it came to facing the uncle, the way Madeline told about it made the uncle a different being. He was most frightfully jolly afterwards, and said things about heroes, and the hat-stand was forgiven and forgotten.
All this time Madeline and our young hero were in the cave surrounded by the crowd of dread cave-dwellers. It was an awful moment, you will think? You are wrong. For, strange to say, they turned out not to be cave-dwellers at all, but a party of Italian tourists being shown over the caves by a proper English guide with a lantern. And the caves are just show-caves though very old and wonderful, and every one knew they were there except us! It was a silly ending to the finest adventure we ever had.
Only there was some glory in it — because nobody knew of the hole we had fallen in by, nor yet the hole we had scraped under the wall. The part we fell into was unknown to man, and the guide, who proved most jolly, said he should call that part “the Clifford Caves.” What we fell down was a dene-hole. If you go to the Chislehurst caves you’ll see it. But it is better to go in by the front way.
CHAPTER TEN. THE CRIMINALS; OR, THE STOLEN ELEPHANT
To look at us no one, except of unsound mind, would ever say that we looked as if we had descended to the lowest abysses of crime. Yet such, I am sorry to own, is the fact. We were sorry when we were told that it was wrong, but at the time, as is so often the case, it did not seem so. And I shall always feel sorry for criminals who do our kind of crime, because now I know the dangers and difficulties of doing it, and what you have to put up with both during and afterwards; and I also know that we should never have done it if other people had not behaved to us in a way no free-born Englishman could be expected to bear, especially when one of them had a passionate Southern nature. And we do not know the sad pasts of criminals, or what drove them to it, or perhaps we should be kinder to them than we are, and not put them in prison so much, but just teach them better. We were quite ready to learn better the moment we were taught, and we were really sorry for doing what we had, especially as Father and Mother did not like it. All the same it was a lark.
It happened like this. At the beginning of the holidays we discovered, with sinking hearts, that Mother had asked Miss Knox to stay over Christmas. This comes of Mother’s having such a kind heart. She is always asking people she doesn’t want, just because they have nowhere else to go. Father calls them the Undesirables, and never takes any notice of them at all except to say, “Ha, good morning, Miss Knox. Quite well? That’s right!” in a very jolly and kind way, and then takes no more notice of them till it is time to say, “Goodnight, Miss Knox. Sleep well!” in a manner as kind and jolly as the other.
We, however, are not allowed to behave like this. We ha
ve to be polite to Un-desirables just the same as if they were anybody else.
And Miss Knox was awful, as usual. You always felt she was always trying to get something out of Mother, and she was full of gentle, patient cheerfulness, and that is very wearing, as I daresay you have noticed. And she would call people “Dear Mrs. Whatever-their-name-was,” and say “Have we not?” and “Do we not?” instead of “Haven’t we?” and “Don’t we?” like other people. And I do not like her voice, or the shape of her face, or the way she does her hair, or the smell of her handkerchief, or the way she drinks, or eats bread-and-butter. Mother says this is called prejudice and is very wrong. I am sorry I have this dreadful fault, but I would rather have it than be like Miss Knox all the same. And so would the others.
I do not wish to be unjust, so I will own that Miss Knox did a lot for the Bazaar. Father said that Miss Knox spread Bazaars like a disease wherever she went, but Mother said, “Hush!” But the Bazaar had been Miss Knox’s idea all the same when she was down in the summer, and we had the pig-fight. Father said she liked Bazaars because then people had to take notice of her, and she could talk to people she wasn’t introduced to. But Mother said “Hush!” again, and got up and shut the door that we were sitting in the room at the other side of.
I do not like Bazaars. I never can see why people can’t give their money to decayed curates, or lost dogs, or whatever it is, without getting something Miss Knox has made in exchange. But this is one of the many subjects where the author’s powerful mind causes him to think thoughts unshared by others. And perhaps I had better get on with the story.
We made things for the Bazaar, of course. The girls made pin-cushions and kettle-holders, and dressed dolls. I should not like to be a girl. We boys made sealing-wax hatpins, and elephants. Elephants are rather jolly to make. You get a bit of board and hammer four nails through it where you want the elephant’s legs to be. Then you put hot mixed glue and whitening on the nails, and quickly cover them with clay.