It must
have been Maskew that listened that night at the door when Elzevir told
me the hour at which the cargo was to be run; for the Posse had been
ordered to be at Hoar Head at four in the morning. So all the gang would
have been taken had it not been for the Gulder making earlier, and the
soldiers being delayed by tippling at the Lobster.
All this Elzevir learnt from Ratsey and told me to pass the time,
though in truth I had as lief not heard it, for 'tis no pleasant thing
to see one's head wrote down so low as 20. And what I wanted most to
know, namely how Grace fared and how she took the bad news of her
father's death, I could not hear, for Elzevir said nothing, and I was
shy to ask him.
Now when I came entirely to myself, and was able to take stock of things,
I found that the place in which I lay was a cave some eight yards square
and three in height, whose straight-cut walls showed that men had once
hewed stone therefrom. On one side was that passage through which we had
come in, and on the other opened a sort of door which gave on to a stone
ledge eight fathoms above high-water mark. For the cave was cut out just
inside that iron cliff-face which lies between St. Alban's Head and
Swanage. But the cliffs here are different from those on the other side
of the Head, being neither so high as Hoar Head nor of chalk, but
standing for the most part only an hundred or an hundred and fifty feet
above the sea, and showing towards it a stern face of solid rock.
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