It was just what he had told Dawes about-the Barbary Ape he could follow to the promised land. Yet now he thought to catch it and hold it fast, so that Britain might still hold the Rock. But this one seemed unhappy with the meager fare it had received from the Corporal, and Sergeant Hobson watched it scrabble away over a few rocks and into a passage he knew led nowhere.
“See here,” he called after the Macaque. “Where are you off to? That’s a bloody dead end! You’ll not get out that way-in fact you’ll not get loose at all once I get my fat fist on the scruff of your neck!”
He got up, following the ape, feeling his way in the dark and expecting to catch it just round the next bend. This tunnel led south, down the last of the rocky spine of Gibraltar until it ended somewhere beneath Windmill Hill. It went on for just another few hundred yards, and he could hear the chatter of the Macaque up ahead, but it was very dark. Then he came up short, surprised to reach an impasse in a great boulder that blocked his way.
He knew this rock, as it marked the end of the passage but his Macaque was nowhere to be seen. Hobson fumbled about his shirt pocket for a lighter, holding it up to cast a wan, flickering light on the eerie carved rocks of the cave walls. He remembered the old legend that said there was a hidden tunnel that went all the way under the straits to Spanish Morocco, though he knew that was folly. Then he keened up his senses, looking about when he heard the echo of his quarry resounding, hollow and very distant.
“Now where have you gotten to?” he said, hearing only the echo of his own voice. There was no sign of the beast.
The Barbary Ape was gone.