The Dragon in the Cliff

by Sheila Cole

  “If it is a crocodile, wait for me,” he shouted back.

  “I don’t know what it is,” I said, pointing out the bone-white streak in the ledge to him as he rushed up.

  “But you do believe it belongs to a crocodile?” he asked.

  “Too early to tell,” I cautioned. “We won’t know what we have until we have some of the surrounding stone cleared away.” We set to work immediately. We soon found that the marl in which the fossil was embedded was hard and that we could make little progress with the tools we had. Henry offered to go back and fetch some heavier tools and a workman so that we could continue, but I pointed out that it was growing dark and that the tide had turned. He reluctantly agreed to wait for low tide the next day. After trying to work with the tools that we had for a while longer, we stopped.

  The sun was low and the tide was coming in quickly when we reached the beach. We had only a narrow path left between the cliffs and the incoming waves. Near Church Cliff we were caught by a wave. When I saw him spluttering and soaked in his fine clothes, I burst out laughing. He pointed and laughed at me, and I realized that I must look ridiculous, too, wearing my Sunday bonnet with my clothes wet through to the skin.

  I caught Henry’s eye as we started up the path from the beach, and we both laughed again.

  As we walked from Long Entry lane onto the Butter-market we passed Mr. Clerkenwell, who stopped in his tracks to turn and stare at the two of us in our wet clothes. His shocked look only added to our hilarity.

  It rained during the night, the first rain in weeks. It was a steady downpour that fell all night and into the morning. Water ran in rivulets down the streets and alleys of Lyme into the river and from there out to sea with a rushing, roaring sound. As if by plan, the rain stopped by midmorning. The sun broke through, sparkling off the sea and off the windowpanes in town, dazzling the day itself with its bright rays. Fool that I was, I believed that nature herself was on our side.

  I gathered my tools as soon as we finished dinner. Mama asked me to run to the egg woman to buy some eggs and cheese for supper. “Mr. de la Beche will be here with the workmen at two-thirty,” I protested.

  “It shan’t take you but a few minutes. Besides, you should not go out so soon after a rain. It isn’t safe,” Mama said, sending me off. But I was so eager to go that I dismissed her warning.

  I ran to the marketplace, darting in and out of the crowd from the surrounding countryside buying and selling their produce and animals, trying not to bump into anyone. I looked up at the clock on the steeple and my heart sank. It was nearly three o’clock. I was late and I was going to keep him waiting. I ran all the way home with the eggs and the cheese. I burst into the shop breathlessly and ran up the stairs to our rooms. Henry was not there.

  I took off my bonnet and brushed my hair again. Then I went downstairs. I looked at the tools I had in my sack, taking them out and putting them back in: a mallet, two geological hammers—one heavier than the other—a few cold chisels, a brush, some dropcloths. I picked up a broom and swept the shop. When I finished, I tidied the workbench. The chimes of St. Michael’s rang three-thirty.

  “I have had a deuce of time finding someone to work for us,” he explained when he arrived soon afterward. “They all said that it was foolhardy to go to Black Ven after a rain. Jim Greengrass here is the only one who would agree to come.” About thirteen or fourteen years old, Jim Greengrass had a thatch of black hair and eyes that were small, black currants in his pudding of a face. Henry found him at the market where he had come to look for a day’s work.

  “They may be right,” I admitted reluctantly. “There are more likely to be slides after a rain. Perhaps we should not go.”

  “I am going no matter what,” Henry said. “I’ve thought of nothing else, and I’m not waiting another day. Anyway, the rain will make the digging easier, won’t it?”

  I admitted that it would. Caught up in Henry’s enthusiasm, I made light of the danger and, turning to Jim Greengrass, asked, “Are you afraid?”

  He looked down at his dirty, bare feet. “He’s paying me good money,” Jim said in a hoarse whisper, indicating Henry with a nod of his chin, “and I need the work. I’ll take my chances.” We agreed on going.

  The three of us made good progress at breaking the fossil out. By the time the sun set we could see that we had a jawbone, perhaps more, but we could not tell without several hours of work. It was growing dark as we began to make our way down the ledges to the beach. At one point the moon, which had been lighting our way, was covered by clouds and we could not see anything. Jim Greengrass, afraid of misstepping and falling, sat down on the ledge and refused to go farther. There was nothing for Henry and me to do but to sit down, too. Jim Greengrass did not talk, but Henry and I, who were excited by our find, were making plans for extracting it. In the midst of our conversation, there was a rumble from deep in the earth. We froze, not knowing what to do. There was a deafening roar as the earth only a few feet from where we were sitting split off from the cliff and broke apart. We watched in horror as it fell and crashed to the beach below and kept falling, pouring, tumbling from the cliff in a wild, rushing river of rocks, dirt, and bushes. Gradually, the falling rocks and dirt tapered off so that only a trickle of dirt fell, and then it stopped altogether. It was quiet once more, except for the pounding of my heart, which was as deafening to me as the slide itself. Some time passed before we dared speak and when we did, we whispered as if the earth itself might hear us and begin to roar again.

  In the quiet aftermath I heard Jim Greengrass mumble to himself, “They’re mad, mad to come here. I could have been killed for an old jawbone!”

  After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the moon appeared again, giving us a shadowy light to see our way by. Subdued and quiet, we scrambled down to the beach and made our way back to town. The tide was almost in, but we were afraid to stay too close to the cliffs and were forced out into the surf. We were wet through by the time we reached town.

  Except for an occasional lamp flickering from an uncurtained window, the streets of Lyme were dark. We parted in front of the shop with whispered promises to meet the next afternoon.

  To say that Mama was worried when I was late and that her worry turned to anger when she learned that I was safe, is to make brief what was in actuality a tiresome scene in which I was subjected to a tirade about my reckless behavior. Why did I go to Black Ven so soon after a storm? Didn’t I know that it is dangerous? Was it because of Henry de la Beche that I went? Was I so smitten by his charms that I had taken leave of my senses, even staying out after dark with him? She could see that I was not the same girl since I had met him. “Preening, standing in front of the glass, wearing your Sunday bonnet to go collecting. And those looks you give each other. Don’t think that I am blind to such things. You are being foolish, Mary. He has a fortune, and he is not our kind. He is just amusing himself with you and your fossils because he has nothing better to do now. He’ll drop you as soon as something else comes along.”

  I lowered my head and let Mama’s scolding wash over me. I did not dare say anything in my own defense. When she was done, I apologized for causing her to worry. I knew she was right, that it was foolish to have gone. I should not have allowed myself to be swayed by Henry’s enthusiasm, knowing that it was dangerous.

  But I would not admit the rightness of anything else that she said. She was treating me as if I were still a child. But I was no longer a child. I was fourteen. She attacked me for standing in front of the glass, but I did not see anything wrong with that. Why should I not try to be pleasing to others? I am not unpleasant looking, even though I am not pretty in the soft way Lizzie is. My hair is dark and glossy, and people say my eyes, which are my best feature, are intelligent.

  Her comment about the looks Henry and I gave each other made me especially furious because I was embarrassed by it and did not want to admit that there was anything special between us. Instead, I told myself that Henry and I understood one a
nother because we were both interested in fossils and geology. But what did Mama know? Nothing! Nothing about my interests in fossils or geology. The fossils were no more than a way to make money as far as she was concerned. She did not want to know what they were or why they were there or anything else about them, except what they would fetch. And her statement about Henry amusing himself with me and the fossils was unfair. What did she know about that? She had never spoken to him. She knew nothing about him, except the town gossip. I knew that his interest in geology was a serious one. Dr. Carpenter must have thought so, too. Why else would he spend time with him and encourage him?

  Mama’s tirade made me angry and defiant. I decided to meet Henry just as we planned. Mama did not expressly forbid it. But I promised myself that I would be careful not to give her cause for worry.

  It was not Mama who stopped us from meeting Saturday morning, but the weather. It began to rain during the night and continued all day, making it impossible to go out. It did not clear until late Sunday. Chastened by our last experience after a rain, we decided to wait a few days. We set out on Thursday morning at dawn as the tide was starting out. Jim Greengrass, who had promised that he and one of his brothers would meet us on the beach, was not there. After waiting for them for some time, Henry suggested that we go on without them. “I have been shut in the house, thinking about getting my hands on the fossil for days now and they shall not stop me. We can always go back to town and get someone to come out with a litter when we are ready,” he said.

  Henry ran on ahead as we approached the site. I was still climbing when I heard him yell, “Mary! Mary, come here!” His voice sounded at once surprised and outraged. I arrived to find him looking in dismay at a hole. There was a mound of dirt and rock surrounding the hole. “It’s been taken. The fossil is gone,” Henry said.

  “Taken? Who would do such a thing?” I asked, unable to believe what I saw.

  “A lot of people.” Henry shook his head sadly. “Everyone in town dreams of finding a crocodile, now that you have found one and sold it to Squire Henley.”

  I had been so caught up in being the one who found the crocodile that I had only been dimly aware of others’ jealousy, but now that Henry had put it into words, I knew it was true. Still I could not bring myself to believe that someone would actually steal one of my finds. “Do you think someone just happened to come upon it?”

  Henry smiled sadly. “It’s not likely, Mary. This is not the place for a casual stroll. It must have been someone who knew about it, who knew where it was, and who came here deliberately to take it.”

  “Jim Greengrass,” we said in unison. He was the only one who knew where we were working. But still I didn’t want to believe it. “We can’t be sure it was Jim Greengrass. He was scared Friday. It doesn’t seem likely that he would come back here. It might have been someone else. Who else knew about it?” I asked.

  “Everyone. I was so proud, I told everyone who would listen that I found part of a crocodile in Black Ven,” Henry admitted.

  We did not talk much on the way back to town. Nevertheless, when we reached the shop, we did not go our separate ways immediately. We stood outside for some time going over and over everyone who might possibly have taken our find, coming back to Jim Green-grass every time. My heart felt heavy and I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. “It doesn’t matter who took it, there is nothing we can do about it. Anyone who wants to can take my finds, and there is no way I can stop them. But if it keeps happening, I shall have to find some other line of work,” I said to Henry.

  “You cannot let someone take your finds that way,” Henry said. “It is yours. You found it. They wouldn’t have known where it was if you hadn’t. And we uncovered it. Whoever took it is a thief. They must be stopped.”

  Mrs. Cruikshanks passed by on her way to market, and I was conscious of how we must look to the neighbors standing there talking so long. I broke off our conversation.

  “I shall find out who did it, and I shall make them very sorry,” Henry called to me as I stepped in the doorway.

  Lyme being such a small place, word of the theft got around quickly. At the smith’s that afternoon, Robert Cruikshanks, who was sharpening my chisels, said something about a fossil, which I couldn’t hear over the noise of the metal clanging. “What did you say?” I shouted.

  Stopping the hammer in midair, Robert cocked his head to one side so that he was looking up at me with one large brown eye like a bird, “Said I heard someone picked off the young gentleman’s crocodile.” He was chuckling to himself as he brought the hammer down on the chisel, sending sparks flying.

  “Who told you that?” I demanded.

  “Word gets round,” he said, bending over to plunge the chisel into a bucket of cold water.

  “It was I who found that crocodile, and I say that whoever took it is a thief.”

  He straightened and his eyes met mine. “It was still in the cliff, was it not? There for the taking. It’s not yours until you have it off the beach.”

  “He’s a thief all the same,” I countered angrily.

  “Well, thief or not, someone else has it and will make a pretty penny off it, and there is not a thing you or the young gentleman can do about it.” Chuckling to himself, he turned his back to me and pulled the chisel out of the water.

  Robert Cruikshanks thought it was amusing that someone took my find. I knew that he had never been my friend, but he was my neighbor. Why would he wish me ill? He never had before. He seemed pleased enough for me when I found the crocodile and he was angry on my behalf when Henley paid me so little. Why was he glad now? What had I done to offend him? Had I been too proud? I went over and over my conduct to see if I had given him or anyone else cause for offense. But I could not think of any reason why they should be angry with me. That they were jealous of my good fortune in finding the crocodile and selling it to Squire Henley I was willing to believe, but that did not seem to be sufficient cause for such maliciousness.

  JOSEPH TAKES MATTERS INTO HIS OWN HANDS

  Joseph stopped by the shop later in the day to tell me that everyone in the marketplace was talking about the theft. “They said someone pinched de la Beche’s crocodile.”

  “De la Beche’s fossil?” I said, beginning to understand why Robert Cruikshanks found the theft amusing. He thought Jim Greengrass stole it from de la Beche, and that de la Beche’s finds were fair game because he was already rich. “It was my find,” I told Joseph. “Mr. de la Beche would have paid me for it.”

  “Everyone says it was de la Beche’s,” he said.

  “It was mine,” I repeated, explaining that I found the fossil, and that my agreement with Henry was that he bought whatever of value either of us found when we were out collecting together.

  Joseph was upset by this intelligence. The story of the theft was amusing when it was de la Beche’s fossil, but now that he saw that I was the loser, he was angry. “We cannot let Jim Greengrass get away with it,” he said heatedly. “I shall give him a thrashing, one he’ll remember the rest of his life.”

  “Please leave well enough alone,” I told him. I felt hopeless and sad, sensing that behind people’s amusement at the theft of Henry’s fossil by a poor laborer lay resentment at his wealth and disapproval of my connection with him. I could see that if Joseph fought with Jim Greengrass it would only make matters worse.

  “Then he and everyone else will think that they can pick off your finds anytime they choose. We cannot let it be. I must teach him a lesson and when I do, I am going to see that word of it gets round town. I want everyone to know that if anyone touches your finds again they will have to face me.”

  It happened a week or two later. Mama and I had finished supper, cleared away the dishes, and were sitting around the table. I was reading to Mama from Pilgrim’s Progress when Joseph burst into the house. His cheek was bruised, his lip swollen, and his shirt bloody. Alarmed by his appearance, Mama and I rushed to do what we could to minister to his wounds. Brushing our efforts
aside, he launched into an excited account of his fight with Jim Greengrass.

  This is what I remember of it.

  Not wanting to attack Jim Greengrass in the marketplace where others might come to his aid, Joseph and Robert Whitesides lured him to the Cobb at sunset with the promise of a keg, which they said they had uncovered on the beach and wanted him to sell for them.

  Suspecting nothing, Jim Greengrass came by himself. As he approached the meeting place, Joseph jumped out and fell upon him, knocking him down on the stones. He rolled, trying to throw Joseph off, but Joseph held fast, clinging to him with one arm round his neck and beating him on the head with the other.

  In the midst of the struggle Jim Greengrass threw Joseph off, got to his feet, and ran. In his confusion, he ran to the far end of the Cobb. Joseph was soon after him in pursuit. When Jim saw that he was at the end of the wall and could go no further, he realized that he was caught, but before he could make a dash for it, Joseph was on him. Jim swung at Joseph. Joseph ducked his punch and kicked him. Jim fell to the pavement. Joseph pinned Jim to the stones to keep him from rolling over the edge of the wall into the sea. Then he took Jim by the shoulders and threatened to throw him over if he didn’t tell him what he did with the fossil. At first Jim wouldn’t say. But when Joseph started to drag him as if he really meant it, Jim began to talk. He admitted that he had sold the fossil. But when Joseph demanded to know who bought it, all Jim would tell him was that it was a man from Charmouth.

  “Oh, Joseph, you were hurt, and it was because of me. You shouldn’t have!” I exclaimed when Joseph finished his story.

  Mama shook her head disapprovingly. “Now look at you, Joseph,” she said. “Look at you. What did you do with that fighting? You didn’t get the fossil, did you, son? But you did get bruised and bloody. This shan’t be the end of it, I tell you. It’ll be a wonder if Jim Greengrass doesn’t come back to town with some of his brothers to give you a beating in return for the one you gave him. And what for? You are a poor boy, and so is he. Poor boys fighting over a few petrified bones because the rich will pay for them, and all of Lyme laughing over it. You should have left well enough alone.”