for a fortnight succeeding our arrival the weather remained calm and bright, so that uncle jenico and i were able to explore the locality with great comfort and satisfaction. the coast, which we followed up both north and south for miles, was extremely desolate and unvisited, though bearing at intervals all along it the traces of former settlements. it would seem to have been quite thickly populated once, during a period which dated probably from the incursions, first, of the roman legions, and, after, of those salt sea-wolves who preferred squatting round the fringes of their conquered island—with the open door of the sea beside them, and its smell in their briny nostrils—to penetrating into the traps of the close-shut valleys. later, christianity had come to fret these windy, foam-whipped settlements with pinnacles, and monastic walls, and stone fanes with jewelled windows and airy bell-towers, so that church might peal to church all down this long front line of the position it had won. but corruption creeping in with prosperity, and lawlessness with the tides, god had withdrawn his countenance from the temples that abused his service, and had permitted the ocean to break in their defences and one by one devour them. the priest who had evaded his vows had ages ago tucked up his cassock and fled; the parson who succeeded him, and to the reversion of his benefices, could not so hoodwink heaven by taking his tithes of smuggled tobacco and brandy, as to stay for one season the hunger of the gluttonous waters. year by year, century by century, the storms had fed on these devoted sand-built coasts, and were still feeding when we came to know them. towns and once-flourishing colonies had disappeared as utterly as if they had never existed. not only they, but the very soil on which they had been planted, paved the floor of the ocean for miles out. there were legends of foundered bells rung by unseen mermen at incredible distances from shore. there were stories of treasure chests and sculptured marbles revealed to storm-belated fishermen in the deep troughs of monstrous, bottom-scouring waves. so far away as the weary sands themselves, it was said, traces of the ancient dunberry could be spelt out, in calm seasons, by those who gazed intently enough and long enough into the green, deep waters. it was a fable, probably, in a land of fables; yet it served to emphasize the wreck of time, and will show upon what a haunted border-land of ghosts we had come to make our home. the modern village itself was old. how ancient, then, those grey ruins on the cliff, which had survived to see the last of the glory, of which they had once been a part, claimed by the deep, and their own hoary traditions engulfed into the pettier traditions of a little clan!
these same ruins consisted of the great tower of the abbey, with a mass of tumbled and complicated masonry at its foot; of the line of the nave, picked out in an avenue of shattered arches which ran seawards until stopped by the upward and outward sweep of the cliff; and, finally, of a maze of huge fragments, mostly on the inland side, which marked the sites of monastic buildings, lazar house, boundary walls, and so forth. elsewhere were traces of aisles, cloisters and supernumerary offices uncountable, the whole buttressed with ivy. but the most significant ruin of all, to my thinking, was one which stood under the cliff, and for three-fourths of its depth apart from it. this was no other than the abbey well, which generations of storms had gnawed out of its deep bed in the ground without being able to crunch and devour the sturdy relic itself. there it stood, a titan of the vanished race, sprouting stubborn from the littered sand below, cemented, as it seemed, by the very drift which was yearly flung upon it to destroy. exposed and isolated, choked with parching rubbish as it was, how thrilling was the thought of the monks who had once drunk from it; of the waters it had drained from the hill; of the hill itself with its one-time springs lying under the salt sea! it was the very gaunt dead monument to the desolation of this land, and as such, it seemed, would endure when all else was vanished. the storms which took the rest stone by stone, could do no more than stone by stone reveal this; the earthquake, which at a blow had rent the massive tower and tumbled half the remaining walls, had left this unshaken. it was a wonderful and impressive relic.
the first time i had entered among the ruins was by myself. i climbed the slope early on the morning before breakfast, and stood in the midst of them, thrilled and awestricken. a little grassy valley divided me from the hill which concealed the village, of which not so much as a roof was visible from where i stood. i seemed entirely cut off and alone, a pigmy in the stupendous shadows of these “ruined choirs.” the ground swept in a steepish curve to the cliff edge, and again, inland, in one slightly shallower. these were the “old and new testaments” of the mitre; and in the “valley of knowledge” that lay between, was built the abbey, its monastery, chapter-house, refectory and other buildings taking and topping the western slope, which, on its further side, went shelving down to the cemeterium fratrum, and the confines of the old grounds.
i poked about among the shattered stones with a feeling between fear and curiosity. i could tell by the fresh edges of the rents, and the way in which little avalanches of mortar were constantly falling with a whispering sound, that much of the devastation was recent. the tower had been breached by the earthquake all down its seaward front, opening a monstrous gap from which a cataract of stones had thundered, and piled themselves in foam, as it were, at the foot. in one place, near the cliff slope, a mighty plinth had been heaved on to its side, and i saw the mould on the under surface of it yet grooved with the tracks of slugs and beetles. it had sunk, with the mass of masonry cemented to it, two-thirds of its breadth into the earth, and all about the ground was strangely wryed, and distorted, and cracked, and bubbled up into mounds, as if here the underheaval had made itself peculiarly felt. i was gazing on it half-fascinated, when, happening to raise my eyes, i started to see other regarding me fixedly from a face which seemed to have sprouted from the earth.
i gave a little cry and uttered mr. rampick’s name. at the word, the man himself rose to his height, from the position in which it appeared he had been crouching, and ascended the last steps of a cliff pathway, of the existence of which i had not known. he came up to me, rubbing the back of his bony hand across his mouth.
“come to see fur yourself, sir?” he said, in his breathless, fawning way.
“yes,” i answered. “it was here, wasn’t it?”
he stamped with his great foot.
“here, or hereabouts,” he said, “they lays under—as supposed—each with his brace o’ runlets.”
it was a fearful but thrilling thought.
“why don’t they dig for them?” i whispered.
he gazed at me a moment, breathing hard. his eyes seemed blacker, the rims round them more livid than i had yet noticed.
“what!” he cried, so hoarsely that his voice cracked. “displace these here sacred ruins fur the likes of they! the lord, sir—begging your pardon—set his own trap for them in his own way; and it been’t fur us to rise his dead. may i make so bold to axe if your uncle knows you’re out?”
i felt the insolence of the question, but was too young to resent it.
“no!” i exclaimed, surprised.
“ah!” he said. “i lay he won’t be best pleased, sir, with humility. this here hill, sir, if all what’s said is gospel true—is risky ground to walk fur them as knows it not, nor its toppling stones, sir, nor its hidden abscesses. i’d go home, sir, if i was you, with favour, sir.”
i was offended, but a little frightened also. blushing scarlet, i turned away, without a word, and ran down the slope homewards.
i told uncle jenico of my adventure and encounter. to my further surprise he commended mr. rampick’s warning.
“what should i do, if anything happened to you, richard, when i was not by?” he pleaded.
there was a note of emotion in his voice which touched me, and i promised i would never seek the mitre again out of his company. i meant it when i said it; but, alas! the venturesomeness of youth led me later on, i am ashamed to confess, to disregard my promise.
that was not till long after, however; and in the meanwhile the weather remaining fine, as i have said, we had plenty of opportunity for exploring the district. not a day was allowed to pass, moreover, without our investigating at least once in the twelve hours, a section of the coast. uncle jenico would prod all the way, with his thick stick, into the moraine of shingle which ran along the shore above the high tide mark. at these times he would be very absent-minded, answering my questions at random, and i knew that he had morant and his golden bushels in his thoughts. he never found anything, however, and each evening would look up at the sky and predict stormy weather with a sham deprecation of the inconvenience it would be to us.
but at last the weather really did break, and dark evening settled in, with a high wind and rising sea. it blew a gale all night and throughout the following day, and uncle jenico bemoaned our detention in the house with a gratified face.
it was not until the second morning that it had cleared sufficiently to enable us to go out, which we did immediately after breakfast. the sun was blinking waterily, and the surf pounding yellow as we came down to the beach; but the wind had fallen and the rain ceased, which was enough for us.
uncle jenico, with his blue coat fastened tightly across his chest, was looking extraordinarily swollen, i thought, until the reason was explained to me. we had not gone far, when—first glancing all about him with an air of twinkling mystery—he cautiously unbuttoned, and revealed, neatly folded upon his chest, a little bushel sack such as they use for potatoes.
“hush!” he whispered, though not a soul was in sight; “the difficulty will be to avoid observation when we bring it back full. i dare say they’re honest here, richard; but it’s a wrong business principle to presume upon a sentiment. we must dine and sup out—i’ve brought some sandwiches with me, and mr. sant will excuse you for once—and return with our booty after dark.”
“do you expect to fill that, uncle?” i said, aghast for all my infancy.
“well,” he answered, laughing joyously but privately, “i hope not quite, or it would puzzle us to carry it. but, in common wisdom we must make the best we can of this rare opportunity.”
he hung the sack over his arm, and we started off. the storm had certainly overturned the shingle, and scattered much of it abroad in a tangle of seaweed and dead dog-fish. for hours we hunted on, groping sedulously among the litter; and at last, late in the afternoon, we found a penny. at least, i was convinced it was one, being intimately acquainted, like most boys, with the coin. but uncle jenico would not hear of it. he was shaking with excitement as he examined it. it was so rubbed by the action of the waves as to exhibit nothing but a near-obliterated bust, which i was sure was that of our late lamented king. my uncle, however, pointed out to me distinct traces, though i could not see them, of a latin inscription, and was jubilant over the find. it did not make much impression on the sack, it is true; but he was careful to point out to me that the value of a nugget, such as it would take two men to carry, might all be contained in a diamond which one could slip into one’s waistcoat pocket. it was not so much quantity we needed, he said, as quality; and he was quite satisfied, entirely so, with the result of our day’s exploration.
i was glad of this, at least, being dog-tired long before the sun-setting, as it justified us in going home to supper. but my faith in morant, i am afraid, was already sadly shaken.
