Medusa

by Hammond Innes

  ‘Bill Tanner? Yes. He says there’s a marvellous one by Arenal d’en Castell, a sort of blue grotto, enormous. He’s promised to take me down, sometime when I’m not fossicking around, as he calls it.’

  I switched off my torch, looking back up the slope. The entrance was no longer visible, only the glimmer of moonlight on stone showing ghostly pale. The roof was getting very low, though at that point the walls had pulled back as though this were some sort of expansion chamber. Like the other caves in the Cales Coves area, the walls here were water-worn and the upper entrance high above sea level. It must have been formed at some period when the island’s rainfall was very much greater than it was now. The pounding of the sea so far below could never have done it by air pressure alone.

  ‘Here’s the roof fall.’ Petra’s voice came to me distorted and booming. ‘I’m just about there. But mind your head.’ And then I heard her swear.

  ‘What is it? Have you hurt yourself?’ I snapped my torch on, swinging it to send the beam lancing ahead down the tunnel.

  ‘No. Nothing like that.’ She was crouched down, her torch on the left-hand wall. In front of her the cave appeared to have collapsed, loose rock piled almost to the roof, rubble everywhere.

  ‘What is it then?’ I scrambled down the slope.

  ‘Look! It’s gone. The bastards have put their bloody shovels right across it. They’ve scraped it clean away. Why did they have to enlarge the hole?’ She was leaning forward, brushing at the rock face with her fingers, the fine limestone dust sifting on to the stone below and almost white in the torchlight. She sat back on her haunches, cursing softly under her breath. ‘If only I’d sent you a message and come straight back here and waited. When do you think they did it?’

  She turned her torch on the fallen roof and the gap that showed between the broken rock and the rubble below was about three feet wide and not more than two feet at the highest point. There was air coming through it. I could feel it cool on my face and there was a smell of the sea. ‘I should have come back,’ she said again. ‘Knowing somebody had been working on this fall, I should have stayed here to explain to them how important that drawing was.’

  I tried to tell her not to worry about it too much. ‘This is quite an extensive roof fall. Get this rubble shifted and you may find more drawings as you expose the rest of the cave walls.’ It wasn’t the cave drawing that interested me, though I realised the loss of it meant a lot to her, it was the fact that a passage had been cleared through the roof fall. It wasn’t only that I could smell salt water, I could hear it, the slop of wavelets on the rocks in the cove or against the base of the cliffs. ‘I’m going through,’ I said.

  ‘No.’ Her hand gripped my arm. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what’s the other side, why they’ve been digging away at this roof fall?’

  ‘Well, of course I do.’ We were crouched together in what was clearly another expansion chamber, and as I circled it with my torch I saw that all the rubble they had cleared from the fall had been piled around the walls. Petra was straining at a large chunk of rock. ‘Give me a hand, will you?’ But when we had pulled it away, and she had cleared the rubble and dust that was piled behind it, exposing another foot or so of the limestone wall, there was nothing there, the surface completely bare. Her frustration and anger was something tangible. I could feel it as she shifted her body into the gap, kneeling now and working away at the rubble, dust rising in a cloud as she scooped the loose fragments of rock up in her hands and thrust them behind her.

  ‘Leave it till tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘No. I must know what’s here.’

  ‘In the morning you can come back again with the proper tools.’

  ‘I must know,’ she repeated, her voice urgent. ‘If there are more drawings, then I’ll have to stay here, make certain they don’t start shovelling out more of this debris. If they come here again in the morning and begin enlarging the passage through this roof fall –’

  ‘Listen!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just stay still for a moment.’ She had been working so furiously, making such a clatter in the confined space, that I couldn’t be certain I had really heard it. ‘Listen!’ I said again and she sat back on her haunches. Dust blew up into our faces, and in the sudden silence the slap of waves breaking seemed preternaturally loud.

  The wind’s getting up,’ she whispered. That’s all.’ And then, when I didn’t say anything, all my senses concentrated on listening for that sound again, she asked, ‘Did you hear something besides the wind and the sea?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A voice. I thought I heard a voice.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No. Of course I’m not sure.’

  We stayed frozen for a while, listening. ‘There’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Just the wind. I can feel it on my face, much stronger now.’

  I could feel it, too. It was as though a door had been opened and was letting in a draught. She bent forward again, working at a rock up-ended against the side of the cave. My torch, probing the hole through the roof fall, picked out a grey sliver of what proved to be bone. But when I showed it to her she brushed it aside. ‘There are several bits of bone lying around. A sheep, or a goat maybe. Probably got trapped in here, or came seeking a dark den in which to die. It’s drawings of animals, not their bones I’m looking for.’ And when I again suggested that she leave it till it was daylight, she turned on me quite fiercely. ‘Can’t you understand? I must be sure there are no more drawings in danger of being destroyed.’

  Five minutes later she was uncovering a mark on the wall that looked like discoloration. It was very faint, a faded ochre line sweeping upwards and stopping abruptly where the roof had fallen away. ‘Could be the back of some animal.’ Her voice was breathless with excitement. ‘What do you think it is, Mike? The arch of the neck perhaps? A bull? At Lascaux there’s a great bull right across the roof of the cave, and there are deer being hunted and plunging to their deaths over a cliff.’

  She went on working at it, exposing more and more of the faded ochre line where it disappeared into the rubble. I was holding the torch for her and she was working so hard I could smell the warmth of her, dust clinging to her damp skin, her face a pale mask. Then I heard it again and I gripped her arm to silence her. ‘Somebody called,’ I said.

  She turned, the piece of rock she had just prised loose still in her hand, her head on one side. Even her hair was covered with a grey film. ‘I don’t hear anything.’ She brushed my hand away, thrusting the chunk of stone behind her.

  ‘I’m going through,’ I said.

  She didn’t seem to hear me, leaning forward again, brushing gently with her fingers at the section of wall she had just exposed.

  I pushed her out of the way and crawled forward over the rubble, turning on my side. I was just starting to wriggle into the gap feet-first when, back up the slope of the cave, I saw a glimmer of light. It grew rapidly brighter, hardening into the beam of a torch, and a moment later Gareth Lloyd Jones was crouched beside us.

  ‘Where’s Soo?’ I asked him. ‘You said you’d stay with her.’

  ‘Waiting in the car.’ He was breathing hard. ‘I came up to tell you.’ He was kneeling now, his face close to mine as I lay with only my head and shoulders protruding from the hole. ‘How far does it go, right through to the cliff face?’ He thought I had already explored the continuation of the cave.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told him. ‘I’m just going to find out.’

  ‘But you’ve been here for a quarter of an hour or more.’ Petra and I started to explain about the mark on the wall of the cave, both of us speaking at once, but he brushed our explanation aside. ‘Have you heard something? Anybody moving about?’

  ‘I thought I heard somebody call out,’ I said. ‘And before that there was something like the murmur of voices. It could have been the sea. Or it could have been squatters.’ And I started to tel
l him about the villa near Binicalaf Nou.

  ‘Voices,’ he said. ‘That’s what you heard. There’s somebody in there. I came up to warn you.’ Instead of waiting in the bush-shadowed dark of that track, he and Soo had decided to drive down to the cove. They had left the car and were walking down through the loose sand of the beach towards the sea when they had seen a light on the cliff face away to the left. ‘We were just at the point where somebody had made a little trough in the rock and put up a notice to say the water in it was from a spring and good to drink. You know where I mean?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But where exactly was the light? In one of the cave entrances?’

  ‘Yes, and it wasn’t there long. It wasn’t very bright either, more like a hurricane lamp, or even a candle. A slightly yellowish light, and low down, only a little above the sea.’

  I asked him whether it could have been the riding light of a ship, or perhaps the masthead light of a sailing boat, but he said definitely not. With the moon so bright it would have been impossible for them not to have seen a vessel if there had been one there. ‘Even with the cliff face in shadow, the dark hole where we saw the light was plainly visible. And then suddenly it wasn’t there any more.’ He didn’t know whether it had been snuffed out, switched off, or whether somebody had moved it away from the aperture. ‘I was looking seaward at the time, so was Soo. We both thought somebody must be signalling a boat in through the entrance. But there was nothing coming into the cove. Then, when I looked back at the cave, it was gone. That’s when I decided to come up here and warn you. They’re in one of the caves, but whether it’s this one …’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’ I started wriggling through again, using my elbows, but he stopped me.

  ‘No. If they knew we were here …’ could see his face in the diffused light of our torches. It was shining with sweat and his mouth was moving uncontrollably.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just …’ He reached out, gripping hold of my shoulder. ‘Leave it till morning, man. Please. Then we can come back – with one or two of your employees, or the police. If you go in now –’ He shook his head, his voice trembling.

  Christ! The man was scared. ‘They’re only squatters,’ I told him. ‘Nothing to worry about. And if this is the cave they’re in, then they’ll have heard us. I’m going in,’ I said again. ‘Soon find out if there’s anyone here or not.’

  ‘What about your wife? And Petra here? If they know you’re in the cave …’ He stopped there, the rest of his words bitten back and his face set. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ll come with you,’ he said again, his voice quite obstinate now. He seemed suddenly to have made up his mind, and when I suggested he go back to the car and wait with Soo, he shook his head. ‘If you’re going to try and reach the cliff entrance, then I’m coming with you. It’s my duty.’ It seemed an odd way of putting it, but I didn’t think about it then. I was already working my way in over the roof fall and he was coming after me headfirst.

  The fall was only about ten metres through and then we were crouched low and moving down a steep incline, the breeze quite strong on our faces and our torches showing a low arched tunnel swinging away to the right. As soon as we rounded the bend we could see the cliff-face entrance, a pale rectangle of moonlight, and we could stand upright, for here, at the sea-worn end, the cave was much larger. There were camp beds ranged against the walls, four of them with sleeping bags, wooden packing cases for tables and seats and a paraffin stove that looked as though it had come out of some derelict fishing boat. The stove was for heating as well as cooking, and there were dishcloths, a couple of shirts too, hung on a line above the pipe that carried the fumes out to the cliff face. The whole place was equipped for living in, quite comfortably equipped, and propped against the wall was a heavy timber frame covered with plywood that had been tailored to fit the entrance. It had a little window and great iron bolts that slotted into sockets drilled in the rock so that even in a sou’westerly gale the place would be quite snug.

  The noise of the sea was loud now, the dishcloths swaying in the wind. I went over to the entrance and leaned out. The cliff was sheer, a drop of about twenty feet or so to a narrow rock ledge that formed a sort of natural quay with deep water beyond, and the cave’s entrance had been beautifully worked into scrolled pillars either side supporting a rather Greek-style portico. Inside, ledges had been carved out of both walls, a place for ornaments or household crockery. Whoever had originally fashioned the cave as a home must have been a real craftsman, a stonemason probably, everything so professionally done. ‘All you need is a rope ladder,’ Lloyd Jones said, peering down to the narrow ledge of rock below.

  ‘And a yacht,’ I added. ‘Champagne cooling in the further recesses of the cave and a beautiful girl sunbathing down there in a bikini.’ Or perhaps not in a bikini, just lying there on that ledge, nude in the moonlight.

  He didn’t laugh, and nor did I, for I found myself thinking of Petra, how well she would fit the picture in my mind. ‘Nobody here,’ I said.

  ‘No.’ He sounded relieved. ‘But they’ve been here.’ He had moved back from the entrance, his voice puzzled as he probed with his torch.

  I was puzzled, too, the cave showing every sign of recent occupation and nobody there. The broken remains of an old cupboard full of cans of food. There were biscuits and cornflakes in a rusty cake tin, flour, rice, dried fruit, plastic containers with water, and those dishcloths and shirts hung up to dry.

  ‘Where are the heads?’ he asked.

  ‘The heads?’

  ‘It’s all right throwing the slops out into the cove. But if I want to shit, where do I do it?’ He swung his torch back up the way we had come. That was how we found the offshoot cave. It was quite narrow, the entrance draped with an old piece of sacking so covered with dust it was virtually the same colour as the surrounding wall, and when we pulled it aside, there it was, a chemical loo.

  We were both of us standing there, peering down the narrow passage that continued on beyond the old oil drum with its wooden lid, when suddenly there was a cry and Petra was calling my name, her voice high and urgent, reverberating down the cave shaft – ‘Mi-i-ke!’ I was running then, crouched low. There was the sound of rocks dislodged, a man’s voice cursing, and as I rounded the bend, the beam of my torch showed the soles of his canvas shoes disappearing over the rubble of the roof fall.

  I must have been close behind him as I flung myself on to my belly, but by the time I had squirmed half through the gap, the tunnel beyond was empty. ‘Two of them,’ Petra said, her voice breathless. She was crouched against the wall. ‘I thought it was you and Gareth, then my torch was knocked out of my hand and I was flung back, one of them cursing at me as they pushed past.’

  ‘English or Spanish?’ I was cursing too by then, my hands lacerated as I dragged my legs clear.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She was on her knees, groping for her torch.

  I glanced over my shoulder, struggling to my feet. ‘Hurry!’ He was right behind me and I was thinking of Soo, alone there in the car. Damn the man! Why hadn’t he stayed with her? I ran, bent low, the beam of my torch following the curve of the cave until the gap of the entrance showed a pale oval. A moment later I was out into the cool of the night air, thrusting through the bushes to stand in the moonlight staring down the path where it ran steeply towards the cove.

  There was nothing there.

  I searched the hillside. Nothing moved. Then a car’s engine started, down below, where we had parked, and a few moments later I saw it burst out on to the track where it crossed open country just before joining the road, its engine screaming. It was the red Fiat.

  ‘My God!’ Lloyd Jones, beside me now, had recognised it, too.

  We went straight down the hillside then, moving as fast as we could in the tricky light, jumping from rock outcrop to rock outcrop, splashing
through the water at the bottom. My car was still there, but no sign of Soo. Frantically I began searching the bushes, calling her name.

  ‘They couldn’t have taken her with them, surely.’ He was standing there, staring helplessly about him.

  ‘Well, she’s not here. Nor is your car. Why the hell didn’t you stay with her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you were so long … She asked me to go –’ He turned his head. ‘What was that?’

  It came again, high up the valley side from under the cliffs, and suddenly I knew what it was. ‘Petra,’ I said. ‘It’s Petra, and she’s found her.’

  We climbed back up the hillside, retracing our steps. ‘Here,’ she called, standing suddenly upright beside a patch of scrub. ‘It’s Soo. She’s had a fall.’

  I could hear her then, moaning with pain. Her body was lying twisted in a heap in the middle of a low clump of bushes, Petra bending down to her again, cradling her head as we reached the spot. ‘I think she must have followed the path right up to the cave entrance, then lost her balance when they pushed past her.’

  ‘Anything broken?’ My torch showed her face badly bruised and shining with sweat. Her breath came in great gasps and she was moaning all the time.

  ‘I’ve moved her limbs. They seem all right. But internally …’

  ‘It’s the baby then. If she’s going to have it now …’ I turned on Lloyd Jones. ‘Why the bloody hell didn’t you stay with her, man? If she loses the child …’

  Petra silenced me, gripping my arm, as Soo murmured quite coherently, ‘It’s not – Gareth’s – fault. I asked him …’ Her voice trailed away, her right hand moving to her swollen belly, a bubble of saliva at her mouth as she cried out with pain. Then she passed out.

  ‘We’ve got to get her to hospital.’ Petra’s voice was sharp. ‘As soon as possible.’

  Soo only screamed once as we carried her down the slope to the car. I think she was unconscious most of the time. And she didn’t cry out all the time I was driving back to Mahon. I drove like a maniac, Petra said afterwards, my face set and anger taking hold. Anger at Lloyd Jones for being the cause of her leaving the car and climbing the path to the cave alone, above all, anger at those two bastards who had brushed her from their path as they rushed down the hillside to drive off in that hire car.