IT was on a pleasant
spring morning that, with my little curious friend beside me, I stood
on the beach opposite the eastern promontory, that, with its stern
granite wall, bars access' for ten days out of every fourteen to the
wonders of the Doocot, and saw it stretching provokingly out into
the green water. It was hard to be disappointed, and the caves so
near.
The tide was
a low neap; and if we wanted a passage dry-shod, it behooved us to
wait for at least a week. But neither of us understood the philosophy
of neap tides at that period. I was quite sure I had got round at
low water, with my uncles, not a great many days before; and we both
inferred, that, if we but succeeded in getting round now, it would
be quite a pleasure to wait among the caves inside, until such time
as the fall of the tide should lay bare a passage for our return.
A narrow and
broken shelf runs along the promontory, on which, by the assistance
of the naked feet, it is just possible to creep. We succeeded in scrambling
up to it, and then, crawling outward on all-fours-the precipice, as
we proceeded, beetling more and more formidable from above, and the
water becoming greener and deeper below-we reached the outer point
of the promontory; and then doubling the cape on a still narrowing
margin-the water, by a reverse process, becoming shallower and less
green as we advanced inward-we found the ledge terminating just where,
after clearing the sea, it overhung the gravelly beach at an elevation
of nearly ten feet.
Down we both
dropped, proud of our success: up splashed the rattling gravel as
we fell; and for at least the whole coming week-though we were unaware
of the extent of our good luck at the time-the marvels of the Doocot
Cave might be regarded as solely and exclusively our own. For one
short seven days, to borrow emphasis from the phraseology of Carlyle,
"they were our own, and no other man's."
The first ten
hours were hours of sheer enjoyment. The larger cave proved a mine
of marvels; and we found a great deal additional to wonder at on the
slopes beneath the precipices, and along the piece of rocky sea-beach
in front. We succeeded, by creeping, in discovering dwarf-bushes,
that told of the bright influences of the sea-spray; the pale yellow
honeysuckle, that we had never seen before save in gardens and shrubberies;
and on a deeply shaded slope we detected the sweet-scented wood-roof
of the flower-pot and parterre, with its delicate white flowers and
pretty verticillate leaves.
There, too,
immediately in the opening of the deeper cave, where a small stream
came pattering in detached drops from the overbeetling precipice above,
like the first drops of a heavy thunder-shower, we found the hot,
bitter scurvy-grass, with its minute cruciform flowers, which the
great Captain Cook used in his voyages. Above all, there were the
caves, with their pigeons, white, variegated, and blue, and their
mysterious and gloomy depths, in which plants hardened into stone,
and water became marble.
In a short time,
we had broken off with our hammers whole pocketfuls of stalactites
and petrified moss. There were little pools at the side of the cave,
where we could see the work of congelation going on, as at the commencement
of an October frost, when the cold north wind but barely ruffles the
surface of some mountain pond or sluggish moorland stream, and shows
the newly formed needles of ice glistening from the shores into the
water. So rapid was the course of deposition, that there were cases
in which the sides of the hollows seemed growing almost in proportion
as the water rose in them; the springs, lapping over, deposited their
minute crystals on the edges, and the reservoirs deepened and became
more capacious as their mounds were built up by this curious masonry.
The long, telescopic
prospect of the sparkling sea, as viewed from the inner extremity
of the cavern, while all around was dark as midnight; the sudden gleam
of the seagull, seen for a moment, from the recess', as it flitted
past in the sunshine; the black, heaving bulk of the grampus, as it
threw up its slender jets of spray, and then, turning downward, displayed
its glossy back and vast angular fins; even the pigeons, as they shot
whizzing by, one moment scarce visible in the gloom, the next radiant
in the light - all acquired a new interest from the peculiarity of
the setting in which we saw them. They formed a series of sun-gilt
vignettes, framed in jet; and it was long ere we tired of seeing and
admiring in them much of the strange and the beautiful.
It did seem
rather ominous, however, and perhaps somewhat supernatural to boot,
that about an hour after noon, the tide, while yet there was a full
fathom of water beneath the brow of the promontory, ceased to fall,
and then, after a quarter of an hour's space, began actually to creep
upward on the beach. But just hoping that there might be some mistake
in the matter, which the evening tide would scarce fail to rectify,
we continued to amuse ourselves, and to hope on.
Hour after hour
passed, lengthening as the shadows lengthened, and yet the tide still
rose. The sun had sunk behind the precipices, and all was gloom along
their bases, and double gloom in their caves; but their rugged brows
still caught the red glare of evening. The flush rose higher and higher,
chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for a moment on their
crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and the whole became
somber and gray.
The sea-gull
flapped upward from where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him
slowly away to his lodge in his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant
flitted past, with heavier and more frequent stroke, to his whitened
shelf on the precipice; the pigeons came whizzing downward from the
uplands and the opposite land, and disappeared amid the gloom of their
caves; every creature that had wings made use of them in speeding
home-ward; but neither my companion nor myself had any, and there
was no possibility of getting home without them.
We made desperate
efforts to scale the precipices, and on two several occasions succeeded
in reaching midway shelves among the crags, where the falcon and the
raven build; but though we had climbed well enough to render our return
a matter of bare possibility, there was no possibility whatever of
getting farther up. The cliffs had never been scaled, and they were
not destined to be scaled now. And so, as the twilight deepened, and
the precarious footing became every moment more doubtful and precarious,
we had just to give up in despair.
"WOULDN'T
care for myself," said the poor little fellow, my companion,
bursting into tears; "if it were not for my mother; but what
will my mother say?" "Wouldn't care, neither,"
said I, with a heavy heart; "but it's just back-water, and
we'll get out at twelve." We retreated together into one
of the shallower and dryer caves; and clearing a little spot of its
rough stones, and then groping along the rocks for the dry grass,
that in the spring season hangs from them in withered tufts, we formed
for ourselves a most uncomfortable bed, and lay down in each other's
arms.
For the last
few hours, mountainous piles of clouds had been rising, dark and stormy
in the cave's sea-mouth; and they had flared portentously in the setting
sun, and had worn, with the decline of evening, almost every meteoric
tint of anger, from fiery red to a somber, thunderous brown, and from
somber brown to doleful black; and we could now at least hear what
they portended, though we could no longer see.
The rising wind
began to howl mournfully amid the cliffs, and the sea, hitherto so
silent, to beat-heavily against the shore, and to boom, like distress-guns,
from the recesses of the two deep sea-caves. We could hear, too, the
beating rain, now heavier, now lighter, as the gusts swelled or sunk;
and the intermittent patter of the streamlet over the deeper cave,
now driving against the precipices, now descending heavily on the
stones.
Toward midnight
the sky cleared, and the wind fell, and the moon, in her last quarter
rose, red as a mass of heated iron, out of the sea. We crept down
in the uncertain light, over the rough, slippery crags, to ascertain
whether the tide had not fallen sufficiently far to yield us a passage;
but we found the waves chafing among the rocks, just where the tide-line
had rested twelve hours before, and a full fathom of sea enclasping
the base of the promontory. A glimmering idea of the real nature of
our situation at length crossed my mind. It was not imprisonment for
a time to which we had consigned ourselves: it was imprisonment for
a week.
There was little
comfort in the thought, arising as it did amid the chills and terrors
of a dreary midnight; and I looked wistfully on the sea as our only
path of escape. There was a vessel crossing the wake of the moon at
the time, scarce half a mile from the shore; and, assisted by my companion,
I began to shout at the top of my lungs, in the hope of being heard
by the sailors. We saw her dim bulk passing slowly across the red,
glittering belt of light that had rendered her visible, and then disappearing
in the murky blackness; and just as we lost sight of her for ever,
we could hear an indistinct sound mingling with the dash of the waves-the
shout, in reply, of the startled helmsman.
The vessel,
as we afterward learned, was a large stone-lighter, deeply laden,
and unfurnished with a boat; nor were her crew at all sure that it
would have been safe to attend to the midnight voice from among the
rocks, even had they the means of communication with the shore. We
waited on and on, however, shouting by turns, and now shouting together,
but there was no second reply; and at length losing hope, we groped
our way back to our comfortless bed, just as the tide had again turned
on the beach, and the waves began to roll upward, higher and higher
at every dash.
As the moon
rose and brightened, my thoughts and fears became less troublesome,
and I had succeeded in dropping as soundly asleep as my companion,
when we were both aroused by a loud shout. We started up, and again
crept downward among the crags to the shore, and as we reached the
sea, the shout was repeated. It was that of at least a dozen harsh
voices united. There was a brief pause, followed by another shout;
and then two boats, strongly manned, shot round the western promontory,
and shouted yet again. The whole town had been alarmed by the intelligence
that two little boys had straggled away in the morning to the rocks
of the southern Sutor, and had not found their way back.
The precipices
had been a scene of frightful accidents from time immemorial, and
it was at once inferred that one other sad accident had been added
to the number. True, there were cases remembered of people having
been tide-bound in the Doocot caves, and not much worse in consequence;
but as the caves were inaccessible even during neaps, we could not,
it was said, possibly be in them; and the sole remaining ground of
hope was, that, as had happened once before, only one of the two had
been killed, and that the survivor was lingering among the rocks,
afraid to come home. And in this belief, when the moon rose, and the
surf fell, the two boats had been fitted out.
It was late
in the morning ere we reached Cromarty, but a crowd on the beach awaited
our arrival; and there were anxious-looking lights glancing in the
window, thick and manifold; nay, such was the interest elicited, that
some enormously bad verse, in which the writer described the incident,
a few days after, became popular enough to be handed about in manuscript,
and read at tea-parties by the elite of the town.
