Devil's Rock - Chris Speyer [6]
He stamped his bare feet into the soft, wet sand, leaving deep, dark footprints that quickly filled with water.
As he crossed the empty inlet, the sky brightened and colour crept down from the hilltops. A thin mist still clung to the estuary floor and, looking back, Zaki saw that Morveren appeared to float on a ghostly sea. There was no sign of life on deck.
He continued on his way. Then stopped, bewildered. Where was the sandbank you climbed to reach the rock ledge? Gone. Swept away. In its place a four-metre drop from the ledge to a bed of shingle.
He set off along the bottom of the little cliff to find a way of climbing up. He was a good climber but could see no obvious hand or footholds. The boulder up ahead might offer some possibilities. The nearside of the boulder was smooth and slippery with weed. He walked around it to inspect the other side. Behind the boulder was a dark, low hole in the cliff. A cave. Cave-mouth and boulder were so similar in size and shape that the boulder might have served as a door for the cave, if you had a handy giant to roll it into place. This side of the boulder was almost entirely free of weeds and shells but still too smooth to climb.
Zaki ran his hand over the surface of the stone and wondered why it had remained so clean. Perhaps it had been buried in the sand that used to be banked up against the cliff, and only recently exposed.
He could see that a little sand had collected in the cave entrance, making a small mound. Beyond the mound was impenetrable darkness. Zaki remembered the torch in his fleece pocket, took it out and turned it on. The entrance was little more than his own height but when he shone the torch in and up he could see that the ceiling sloped upwards. The walls of the cave were surprisingly smooth and, like the back of the boulder, free of marine life.
Zaki stepped inside. How deep was the cave? He shone his torch into the darkness. There was no back wall that he could see. Like the ceiling, the shingle floor of the cave sloped upwards. If he followed the passage, would he emerge through another hole in the rock ledge above, or did the cave penetrate deep into the hillside? He edged further in, then stopped.
What was the time? He didn’t want to be caught by the returning tide.
Shining the torch on his watch he saw that it was only five thirty. He had plenty of time. Still, it was unsettling to think that in a few hours this tunnel would be full of water. The thought made him hurry forward. Best to have a quick look and get out.
What if he had misread the tide tables? No. It had been high tide when Morveren entered the estuary, and low tide around six in the evening. Tides get later each day. The tide should still be falling. Dead low in about an hour. Loads of time.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ he told that bit of himself that remained unconvinced. The primitive animal – that gut instinct that distrusts clocks and calculations.
‘There’s really nothing to worry about.’
The deeper he went, the more the cave sloped upwards. It certainly wasn’t going to come out through the rock ledge; he must already be inside the hill. The air in the cave seemed a little drier now and the shingle floor of the first part of the passage had given way to solid rock. Zaki stretched a hand out to the side but the wall was no longer in reach. Dropping the torch beam he saw that the rock floor ahead had been cut into a flight of rough steps. Someone at some time had gone to a lot of trouble. This was more than just a cave, perhaps it was a secret passage! A smugglers’ den? Wait until he showed this to Michael! This was better than rock pools!
Zaki pressed on quickly.
The first flight of steps led up to a long flat section and then more steps. He must be above the level of the rock ledge – above the high-tide line. This part of the cave would never flood.
Reaching the top step, he shone the torch ahead. A wall! The light reflected back at him off solid stone. Was this the end?
Maybe the passage led off to the left or right?