"HIS ISLAND PRINCESS."

Thames Star, Volume LXV, Issue 18277, 28 August 1931, Page 4

"HIS ISLAND PRINCESS."

001 SEISIL STOiY

BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.

CHAPTER XL THE CAVE UNDER THE SEA. •Our situation was amazing- and terrible. We were looked up in a cave under the sea for the night, and perhaps for ever, for all we knew. We could not tell but that the shark—and all sailors are acquainted with the prodigious, unexampled vitality of this lish—still swam in the cave ready to mangle us should we give him a chance. The blackness was deeper than can be imagined save by one who has been entombed. There was no relief for the eye in the tiniest sparkle in the water, in the faintest glow of dead marine growths upon the hanging pillars. And if the place was as black as the grave, it was also as silent. But the atmosphere was warm, despite the cold face of water that spread like a floor. This warmth was no doubt owing to the heat in the rocks overhead through the beating of the sun all day. I clasped Eulalie in my arm, and she pillowed her head on ray shoulder, and during portions of the night she slept, as I knew by her regular .respirations. I leaned against a rock, and a rock was my cushion; it was a hard couch. This was the second time in which a cave had come into an adventure that was like to close my days. I knew not whether I suffered more when I had crouched on the ledge throughout the night than now, sitting and keeping a bitter black watch in this cave through endless eternal hours as they seemed to me, with Eulalie in my arm, and nothing sounding in this vault but her delicate breathing against my ear.

The hideousness of my vigils was heightened by imagination. I thought to myself, since a shark has floated in, why not a grampus, or some vast lish that, in thrusting in, should jam itself and 'block the outlet? I wondered if the water rose in this cavern, if that invisible liquid carpet, whose edge was at our feet, was slowly coming up. Nor could I succeed in deriding this particular fear out of my mind, though in case of the tide making, we had the docks behind us to climb, and the height of the roof, as I have said, was about forty feet. Another wild imagination haunted me. We were imprisoned in a cave in a volcanic island; suppose there should happen a pang of earthquake, a rol'ing convulsion of sufficient force to dislocate the front ;»f the cliff and seal the aperture; these were frightful fancies to swarm before the mind's eye in a black cell under water.

Eulalie put me to shame. She would awake and speak to me in ;••■ p'aeid, sweet a note, she could not. have spoken more calmly had she been safe in bed above. She seemed to know my fear. I believe the dread the intense blackness would have caused her was removed by my presence. She talked easily of the day coming, and ehided me for not sleeping as she did. bidding me use her breast for a pillow, and tcl'inc me she would watch if watching were needful. And then she would slumber again, and awake, and talk tranquilly of the shark, saying tluvt, •if daylight disclosed him swimming in the water, she would attack him afresh and make an end of him. She was awake when the light came. We saw it making a little faint eye in the water where the hole was, whereat I was foolish enough to fetch an easy breath when I saw the passage was not blocked, as, in our nightmare imagination, I had foreboded. Our eyes were so accustomed to the blackness that a very little light ena'bled us to see, and scarce had the surface of water stolen out-of the dusk in that blue, vapourish look the whole place wore, than we both saw the dead body of the shark floating a little distance off the rocks on which we were seated. I cried out in transport: "Thank 'God, we are saved! There he is, Lil! Yours is the victory! Come, let us be gone!" She was as willing as I was. The shark lay in a sullen, motionless, black mass, and a most formidable creature did he seem even in death, though a good deal of him was under the water.

Eulalie gave me the rope and held the end, and we both plunged. She dived in the very eye of the disc of light in the water, and I followed, feeling, as on my entrance, the strain of the line which drew me through the tunnel, so that in less than a minute we were both in the sea, outside, viewing each other in the glorious sunshine, and swimming with hearty strokes for that stretch of coral beach where we meant to land. When we gained the shore I stood to take a view of my wife. I was terrified at first sight. Her white attire was stained with blood, and this, with her fair skin and bronze hair, made her a ghastly figure. 1 found, however, that she was without a scratch. The blood was the shark's, who had spurted plentifully at her in response to her stabs, and so ensanguined her swimming dress, that there was no virtue in the brine she had engaged him in to cleanse her. (To be continued.)