Kay propped the paper on its end and stood beside the old man, who was indeed laden down with chains: there were great shackles on his ankles and knees; which were chained to ringbolts in the stone; a great weight of chains secured his wrists to his ankles. ‘Watch the paper, Master Harker,’ Cole said, ‘don’t heed the chains.’
Kay looked at the horses in his drawing. Sometimes, in earlier days, when he had drawn horses, he had felt that his effort had some merit. These today were the first end-on horses drawn by him; somehow they did really look liker horses than cows. They hadn’t got the Newfoundland dog look that some of his horses had. He thought, ‘I’d like to keep those drawings. They are the best I’ve done.’
In fact, the drawings did stand out from the paper rather strangely. The light was concentrated on them; as he looked at them the horses seemed to be coming towards him out of the light, and, no, it was not seeming, they were moving; he saw the hoof casts flying and heard the rhythmical beat of hoofs. The horses were coming out of the picture, galloping fast, and becoming brighter and brighter. Then he saw that the light was partly fire from their eyes and manes, partly sparks from their hoofs. ‘They are real horses,’ he cried. ‘Look.’
It was as though he had been watching the finish of a race with two horses neck and neck coming straight at him at the winning-post. They were two terrible white horses with flaming mouths. He saw them strike great jags of rock from the floor and cast them, flaming, from their hoofs. Then, in an instant, there they were, one on each side of Cole Hawlings, champing the chains as though they were grass, crushing the shackles, biting through the manacles and plucking the iron bars as though they were shoots from a plant.
‘Steady there, boys,’ Cole said to the horses, as he rose and stretched himself. He put on his coat, pocketed the paper, pencil and lead, and placed Kay on one of the horses. ‘Now, Master Harker, I will put you up on this one,’ he said. ‘Hang on to the mane. I will take the other; we will see if we can get out of this. I will lead the way, Master,’ he said. ‘Hang on to the mane; for you are rather small for a horse this size.’
He turned the horse along the rocky corridor. No light burned in that part, but the horses gave such light that it was like daylight wherever they went. They had not gone far down the corridor when Cole said, ‘No, we are a little too late to go this way. The water’s coming in.’
There before them, the water was coming in. Little wave followed little wave, each marking the rocky walls at a higher level. It came in, muttering and snarling, from somewhere far away to the left. Angry little eddies spun away with dead leaves and bits of twig; the corridor was windy with the air displaced by the water; everywhere in that expanse of caverns there was the booming, roaring, drumming of water echoes. The horses shied at the water. When their hoofs touched the stream, they hissed and smoked, as white-hot metal will when wetted.
‘Back a little, Master Harker,’ the old man said. ‘These horses are fiery. They can’t abide water, which puts out fire, as you know. We must get back up the passage a piece, and we have not too much time by the look of things. The water’s coming in very fast.’ He swung himself down from the horse and helped Kay down. ‘Steady there, boys, and give us light,’ Cole said. ‘We must proceed once more as before,’ he said, ‘with this paper and pencil. Draw me a long roomy boat with a man in her, sculling her.’
‘I’m not very good at boats, and I’ve never drawn a man sculling,’ Kay said.
‘Draw now,’ Cole Hawlings said; ‘and put a man in the boat’s bows and draw him with a bunch of keys in his hand.’
‘I shan’t make much of a hand at that,’ Kay said.
However, it was not so difficult as the horses had been. Old Cole was there to hold the paper and to keep away the Wolves. They were there, muttering, at some little distance. He could see their wicked little red lights and hear them snarling. The thing that he was afraid of was the water, that was rising rapidly. He could see that the horses were alarmed.
‘Well, here’s the boat,’ Kay said. ‘And then, here’s the man sculling. Now, this is the man standing in the bows with a bunch of keys.’
‘Won’t you give him a nose?’ Cole said. ‘Men do generally have them and they are fine things to follow on a dark night when you can’t see your way.’
‘I’m afraid the nose is rather like a stick,’ Kay said.
The old man took the drawing to the water, set it afloat, and watched it drifting away. Somewhere far away to the left there came the noise of another rock or barrier collapsing under the pressure of the stream. Instantly, the swirling of the water intensified and took to itself an angrier note. Bigger waves rushed out of the darkness at them and licked up more of the floor.
‘The sluice-mouth has given way,’ Kay said.
‘That is so,’ Cole Hawlings answered. ‘But the boat is coming too, you see.’
Indeed, down the stream in the darkness of the corridor, a boat was coming. She had a light in her bows; somebody far aft in her was heaving at a scull which ground in the rowlocks. Kay could see and hear the water slapping and chopping against her advance; the paint of her bows glistened from the water. A man stood above the lantern. He had something gleaming in his hand: it looked like a bunch of keys. As he drew nearer, Kay saw that this man was a very queer-looking fellow with a nose like a piece of bent stick.
The boat drove up into the corridor beside them. The man with the nose like a piece of stick steadied her with a boat-hook. The sculler was a bushy-bearded man with his face hidden under a boat cloak. He bent down in the stern of the boat and thrust over a plank. Cole lifted Kay into a safe place in the stern-sheets and then turned to fetch on board the horses, who stamped, snorted and backed, not liking the water. Kay, who was always thrilled by the presence of horses, clambered up on to the gunwale to see them come on board. He half expected to see the boat upset, but Cole and the boatman so trimmed the boat that the first horse clambered on board without trouble. The second horse was more nervy and made the boat rock. Cole brought it on board and soothed it down in the stern-sheets. His eyes stared and his crest rose at the rising water.
‘There, there,’ old Cole said. ‘And now, perhaps, we’d better shove off to see if we can save some other prisoners. We haven’t too much time, the way the water’s coming in.’
Kay looked along the corridor in the direction from which the water was pouring. It was now so brightly lit that he recognised stalactites which he had passed earlier in the day with Abner. There, near one of the stalactites which he had specially noticed, something was shining on the floor just above the edge of the stream. It caught the light and sparkled. Kay looked at it with attention. ‘It must be some of Abner’s diamonds,’ he thought. Then he thought that the thing was shining not from reflected light, but from light of its own. He wondered for a moment whether this were an underground snail or slug that had a power of phosphorescence: he seemed to have read that there were such things. Then the lipping water touched it and seemed to lick it away an inch or two; then, as the next gush of water came, it sidled from its place on to the current, drifted a couple of feet towards them, stuck an instant, and then came dallying along on the edge of the stream.
‘Oh,’ Kay said, ‘look, look! It is your Box! However did it get there? The foxy-faced man must have dropped it.’
‘That is what it is,’ old Cole said. ‘And what quick eyes, Master Harker.’
The old man went swiftly along the boat’s length and vaulted over the gunwale into the stream, which was now over his ankles. He had been quick, but the little aeroplanes now darted down at the shining prize. One of them swooped at it and missed, tried to rise from the water but failed and went directly under the current with a great noise of sizzling. A second darted out; all the wolf motor cars dashed to the brink of the stream. Cole knocked the aeroplanes aside, caught the glittering treasure as it sailed by; then, scooping the water with his free hand, he splashed it into the champing bonnet of the nearest motor car wolf, which a
t once stopped working and sputtered.
Cole vaulted into the boat. ‘Shove off,’ he said. He reached to Kay and at a touch restored his shape. ‘That’s rather better, Master Kay,’ he said.
‘Indeed it is,’ Kay said. ‘And look, there are some oars floating; they must have come from the lake.’
He leaned over the side of the boat and salved one oar: Cole salved a second.
‘Now, here we are,’ Cole said. ‘You stand on that side, Master Kay, and shove her off the rocks. I will do the same on this side.’
The current drove the boat into the alleys of blackness. The gallery in which they were floating was now almost full: they had to stoop to avoid the roof; often they snapped off the stalactites as they passed. The boat drove into another gallery. There, clinging to a stalactite, submerged up to the waist, was a drenched and sodden Rat, crying, ‘Pity a poor drowning man; an old naval pensioner what give his youth for the Empire.’
The man with the boat-hook said, ‘I’ll fetch that chap a clip as we pass.’
‘No, no,’ Kay said. ‘He will help us to find the prisons.’
Cole Hawlings leaned over and pulled the Rat on board by his mangy collar. He was very cold with wet and terror; he shivered with chattering teeth.
‘That’s what comes,’ he said, ‘of having cisterns what burst. Time was when a cellar was a cellar, but now, in these upside-downside days, folk keep their water with their wine, it seems.’
‘You know these cellars,’ Kay said; ‘where are the prisons with the clergymen in them?’
‘Would they be what you call “religious parties”?’ the Rat asked. ‘They’re along here, quite close. I was having as nice a little bit of a religious biscuit as ever I ate, out of one of their pockets, when this water came in and I had to leave it. That’s Life, that is: a poor man works for five years and gets nothing, then, when he gets a bit of biscuit, the cistern bursts. And such is Life. That’s what.’
‘They were along here?’ Kay asked, pointing into the cave.
‘They were along there,’ the Rat said, ‘so was the biscuit; but the biscuit will be pulp by this and the religious parties not much better. And my young nephew, Alf, will have water in his works, too, I shouldn’t wonder, which would be a loss. As pretty a young larcener, he was, as ever I tried, so the Judge said. I suppose you ain’t got a bit of bacon-rind you could give a poor man?’
‘No, we haven’t,’ Kay said.
‘There’s nobody keeps bacon-rind now,’ the Rat said. ‘They’re too proud. Stuck-up, I can it. Yah.’
The boat drove under a low-hanging stretch of cave. There, near a stalactite, was a hole in the roof. Kay thought that he saw the evil mouth of Alf there, saying, ‘Hop it, uncle.’ As the boat drove under the stalactite, Kay saw that it was Alf stretching a dirty paw. The Rat sprang, caught it, swung himself to the hole and disappeared into it.
‘Well, that’s got rid of him,’ Kay said. ‘And there are the cells.’
He was wrong; it was not the prison; it was the cell containing Caroline Louisa.
‘It’s all right,’ Kay cried, ‘we are coming to get you out.’
‘Try your keys, keyman,’ Cole said.
The man with the nose like a broken stick took his keys and opened the door without difficulty. ‘I’m afraid you are sopping wet and half frozen,’ Kay said to Caroline Louisa, as he helped her in, ‘but we’ll soon get you to some dry and warm things. D’you happen to know the way to the other prisons?’
‘I don’t indeed,’ she said. ‘They weren’t anywhere near here.’
At this moment they heard a hail from along the corridor: ‘Boat ahoy!’ Somebody away there in the darkness of the alley was clapping hands and shouting, to attract attention.
‘Who are you?’ Cole cried.
‘The Tatchester Cathedral staff,’ the Bishop’s voice answered.
The boat drove on along the gallery. There, indeed, ankle-deep in the stream at the edge of the corridor, were the Bishop, the Dean, the Archdeacon, the Bishop’s Chaplain, the Canons, the Minor Canons, the Precentor, the Organist, the Master Vesturer, the Bursar, the Librarian, the Chief Theologian and Peter Jones. Cole and his crew helped them on board.
‘How on earth did you all get out?’ Kay asked.
‘Oh,’ the Bishop said, ‘we’ve been out some time. A man and a woman came down, to let out a friend of theirs, called Joe. They went away with him, but after a minute, Joe ran back with the keys and let us all out, and said, “It would be sure death to us to follow him, but that there was another way out,” to which he directed us.
‘We started as he told us, the caves were lit at that time. Then some terrible scoundrels, pirates evidently, wearing red aprons and sea-boots, came stamping along, led by one whom they called Rum-Chops. They said, “It’s no good going that way; all the lower caves are full already, and our submarine’s at the bottom of them sunk. Mizzle” (so they told us), “dead right about, or you’ll be sunk, too.”
‘They ran on and we followed them, but all the lights went out suddenly, and we lost them. Since then we have been groping in the dark, almost at the end of our matches and our hope. Where are we, can you tell us?’
‘Down in the heart of the Chester Hills,’ old Cole said; ‘but perhaps we’ll get you out afore long. Give way, all.’
They shoved the boat on, upstream, poling with oars and boat-hook, heaving with eager hands against the rocks.
‘Where are the others?’ Kay asked.
‘What others?’ the Dean asked.
‘The Bell-ringers, the choirboys and at least half the Choir,’ Kay said. ‘Oh, and the Friends of the Cathedral, and perhaps a lot of others.’
‘Shout, everybody,’ Cole said. ‘If they’ve not all been drowned, they may hear us.’
They shouted: their voices echoed and boomed among the galleries. It seemed to Kay that some other sound of voices could be heard when the echoes died a little.
‘Isn’t that singing?’ he said.
‘And what quick ears, Master Harker,’ Cole said. ‘Singing it is, away along there in the darkness. Heave all together, now, for they must be sorely pressed.’
They drove on against the stream: presently they heard the voices of the Bell-ringers and some of the Choir singing, ‘Good King Wenceslas.’ They shouted to reassure them and soon heard answering shouts. Very soon the boat was alongside the cage, where the poor fellows stood in the cold water which was already over their knees. It was pitiful to hear the piteous cries of the choirboys, some of whom were saying, ‘Oh, if I’d only known, I’d never have cheeked my poor mother,’ or, ‘Oh, if I could only have my time again, I’d do what my kind master told me,’ or, ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t tied that tin can on the dog’s tail,’ or, ‘Oh, if only I could get away, I’d burn my catapult and I would be good; oh, I would be good.’
‘Cheer up,’ Cole shouted to them. ‘We’ll soon get these locks open.’
But to get these locks open was not easy. It was a different kind of lock from any the keyman had known; he tried one key after another.
‘No, they won’t fit these locks,’ he said. ‘You want the Handcuff King for these.’
‘Oh, please be quick, sir; please be quick,’ the boys cried. ‘It is up to our knees already.’
‘I’m afraid it is no good,’ the man with the keys said. ‘I can’t get these locks to work.’
‘I’ve got keys; try these,’ the Bishop said.
‘And these,’ the Dean said. But, no, none of the keys fitted.
‘There’s nothing for it,’ the keyman said solemnly, ‘but to compose yourselves unto a set of watery tombs.’
‘A set of watery rubbish,’ Cole said, heaving himself out of the boat to the door. ‘Let me have a look at these locks. Why,’ Cole said, ‘no wonder you couldn’t get them to work. They aren’t locks: the doors have spring catches and not locks at all. You have only got to open them by the handle here . . . there you are. Now, come out. See that you are all out. And mi
nd you don’t swamp the boat as you get on board. Lively with you now. That’s the ticket. Come, now, are you all on board?’
‘Yes,’ the Master Bell-ringer said. ‘This is the lot of us.’
‘Well,’ Cole said, ‘if you are all on board the lugger, we’ll push off then, upstream. These galleries are almost full to the roof now. There is not much room for us. We all will have to do what they do in the barges in the London tunnels: all lie on our backs and push the boat forward by our boots upon the ceiling.’
All in the boat lay down upon their backs as Cole had bidden, and pushed the boat forward by getting their boots against the roof of the corridor. The sculler alone did not lie down: he bent in the hollow of the stern-sheets, heaving at his oar, which grunted in the rowlock and splashed with the blade. The Precentor kept the time for the kickers: ‘One – Heave! . . . Two – Lift leg . . . Three – Boot on the roof . . . then, One – Heave!’ The boat forged slowly ahead with gurglings and cluckings of water. There was a great current against them and in some places the roof was very near. Kay could see little save archings of rock, which sometimes glistened with water and were sometimes hung with stalactites. His little legs were so short that they were not much good in heaving the boat forward.
In one place, the river ran through a wide cavern, the wall of which had been painted with a procession of men leading bulls and horses.
‘That was our old religion, Master Harker,’ Cole said, nodding towards it. ‘It was nothing like so good as the new, of course, but it was good fun in its day though, because it ended in a feast.’
‘You didn’t eat horses,’ Kay said, ‘did you?’
‘Ah, didn’t we,’ Cole said.
After this they came into a narrow cave where the current was very strong. A sort of glimmer of light showed ahead. ‘There is moonlight and there is the sluice,’ Cole cried.
Kay sat up. There ahead was a silvery, shaking patch of light with a troubled roaring water pouring down in a fall. All about them the water eddied and jobbled. The boat tossed. The men, heaving with their boots, trebled their efforts, and slowly the boat plunged forward against the rush.
The Box of Delights Page 25