It was very quiet down there, and dry; but this roaring turmoil, with
its thunderous crashings and hurtling spray, was infinitely more to his
taste, wet though he was to the bone, and almost deafened with the
ceaseless uproar. For this, terrible though it was in its majestic fury,
was life, and that black stillness below was death.
To the tune of the tumult without, he worked out the dead man's story in
his mind.
It was long ago in the old smuggling days. Some bold free-trader of Sark
or Guernsey had lighted on that cave and used it as a storehouse. Some
too energetic revenue officer had disappeared one day and never been
heard of again. He had been surprised--by the free-traders--perhaps in
the very act of surprising them--brought over to L'Etat in a boat, been
dragged through the tunnel, or made to crawl through, perhaps, with
vicious knife-digs in the rear, and had been left bound in the darkness
till he should be otherwise disposed of. His captors had been captured
in turn, or maybe killed, and he had lain there alone and in the dark,
waiting, waiting for them to return, shouting now and again into the
muffling darkness, struggling with his bonds, growing weaker and weaker,
faint with hunger, mad with thirst, until at last he died.
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