He was hunched over the wheel, his wet eyes bright in the moonlight, anticipating every movement with small motions of the spokes, tiny variations in the opening of the throttle. There was a smile on his lips.
This, April saw at once as she repeated her comment, was a young man doing what he wanted to do: pitting his skills against the elements.
He turned and grinned at her. "I said the wind had dropped. But I warned you there was a sea running, mind," he yelled back.
"There still seems plenty of wind to me!"
"Oh, come now — she's not a point over Force Six! These seas are about eighteen foot, trough to crest. It's when they're shorter that you're in trouble: front half liftin' before your stern's down, and you break your back as soon as whistle!"
The bows corkscrewed through a crest crumbling into foam, hung giddily over space, and then roared down into a trough, to thunder against the swell of the next wave with a shock that sent showers of icy spray exploding into the air. Drenched to the skin, the girl pushed the soaking hair from her eyes and screamed against the wind: "Do you think you can make it to your cave in this kind of weather, Ernie?"
"Sure I can. We have to head out a bit because of the reefs inshore this side of the point. But there's slack water off Tregunda, and it runs powerful deep just there, which is why the old smugglers used it. It's when you get big seas on a shallow ground that it's dangerous... like the Manacles, off Coverack. That's beyond the headland on the far side of the cove: you can see the flashing light as we rise.... There! See! They've had more wrecks there than the rest of the coast put together."
"Okay, Ernie. You're the skipper. if you think you can — Good grief! Look at that!"
A mountainous wave rose at them crosswise, canting the boat alarmingly on her beam. At the same time another breaker speeding diagonally across its face burst with a noise like a thunderclap over the stern, cascading a torrent of sea water into the cockpit. April picked herself up groggily from the duckboards, to hear Ernie shouting: "Bail, woman! bail for your life! Get that water out or we're done for next time we hit a sea like that!"
"What... with? What shall I bail with?" she screamed against the howling of the wind.
Ernie Bosustow was wrestling with the wheel, steering the bucking whaler up and down the gigantic seas like a man on a roller-coaster. "...old petrol tin... stern thwart... fast as you..." she heard him shout.
She found a two-gallon can with the top sawn off under the rear seat, and began frenziedly dipping and throwing, dipping and throwing, as they ploughed on into the gale. The next half hour was sheer nightmare. As soon as they were far enough out to clear the reefs, they had to circle round and run back before the wind, with the great combers, marbled grey and gold by the moon, sweeping past on either side. The whaler, squatting low in the water now that she was half awash, alternately buried her nose and her stern in the crests as the twin screws — now labouring, now racing as they lifted clear of the sea — slogged remorselessly on. Many times, as they sank endlessly into some trough, she was sure they would never rise again; many times, as the boat shuddered to the onslaught of an extra large wave, she was certain it would disintegrate.
But at last she realised that the buffeting had resolved itself into a simple — if extensive — up and down motion; the shriek of the wind had died down to a whistle. She looked up from her back-breaking task. They were quite close in under the cliffs — she could make out their dark outline against the sky. Distantly to either side, she could hear the thunder of surf. She could even make out the pulsing line of phosphorescence where the rollers dashed themselves against the rocks. But straight ahead, in the freak area of slack water the boy had told her about, the sea simply rose and fell, sucking at the strata.
She continued to bail. The boat was now riding lighter in the water, but there was still a good deal aboard.
A moment later, aware of some subtle variation in the atmosphere around them, she straightened as they were carried swiftly forward, relapsed, and then surged on again, apparently straight at the cliff. There was a sudden acceleration, a pouring down of darkness as the moon and stars were extinguished — and then a slow spreading of unearthly green light as they floated out into the middle of an enormous cavern. The whaler had pierced the cliff to reach the Keg-Hole!
Ernie shouted something triumphant but unintelligible — she could not hear what it was because the first syllable he uttered was caught up to echo a hundredfold in the vast chimney of rock above them, distorted and magnified as it crashed around the galleries of dripping stone to merge with the suck and slap and drip of the water and the muffled roaring of the wind above.
There were no waves in the cavern, but the boat rose and fell sickeningly as the water ebbed and flowed — there must be an amplitude of eight or nine feet, April thought, as she peered at a weed-slimed ledge which kept sinking into view as the craft reached the zenith of its climb.
The boy scrambled up on to the covered bow and shouted something again. She saw he was going to try and jump on to the ledge. Three times he fended the boat off, leaning desperately against the slippery rock as it slithered past his hands. On the fourth rise, he launched himself at the side of the cavern, cleared the lip of the shelf and landed on his hands and knees. The next time the boat rose, he was on his feet, beckoning April to follow.
The thrust from Ernie's feet as he jumped had pushed the whaler away from the wall and she had to wait several ups and downs before it had drifted near enough for her to try. Then on the next rise some subterranean current tugged the stern outwards and the bows crunched against the side, jarring the craft from end to end and casting April to the curved decking. As the sea fell away and the boat dropped once more, the gun wale dragged down the face of the rock with a splintering of timber and three of the ropes tethering padded fenders to her sides parted. Yet again the weathered planking smashed into the rock as the ledge sank into the girl's line of vision. With raw and scraped hands, she attempted to keep them apart, but the old boat was too heavy and the swell inexorably nudged her against the wall of the cave. Somewhere up in the bows she could hear water pouring into the sail-locker, swelling the load that swilled ceaselessly from side to side of the cockpit.
The boy was crouched in the dim light on the edge of the shelf, waiting for her with outstretched hands. On the next rise, she gathered herself as the shattered bows lurched up and jumped.
Ernie seized her wrists and threw himself backwards, pulling her down on top of him just as her boot was slipping on the slimy weed.
Panting, she clambered to her feet and looked around her. The cavern was immense; she couldn't estimate how far across. Forty or fifty feet above their heads, the rock strata closed in, narrowing the roof to a shaft, at the top of which, improbably, the moon rode in a patch of sky. And it was the moonlight, reflected and refracted from scores of pale out crops and veins and galleries in this dark chimney, which pierced the gloom with a thousand glittering points of light and flooded the surface of the water with its strange radiance.