The Enchanted Castle | Page 4

sister. "I wish you wouldn't. Suppose there were
snakes!"
"Not likely," said Gerald, but he leaned forward and struck a match. "It
is a cave!" he cried, and put his knee on the mossy stone he had been
sitting on, scrambled over it, and disappeared.
A breathless pause followed.
"You all right?" asked Jimmy.
"Yes; come on. You'd better come feet first there's a bit of a drop."
"I'll go next," said Kathleen, and went feet first, as advised. The feet
waved wildly in the air.
"Look out!" said Gerald in the dark; "you'll have my eye out. Put your
feet down, girl, not up. It's no use trying to fly here there's no room."
He helped her by pulling her feet forcibly down and then lifting her
under the arms. She felt rustling dry leaves under her boots, and stood
ready to receive Jimmy, who came in head first, like one diving into an
unknown sea.
"It is a cave," said Kathleen.

"The young explorers," explained Gerald, blocking up the hole of
entrance with his shoulders, "dazzled at first by the darkness of the
cave, could see nothing."
"Darkness doesn't dazzle," said Jimmy.
"I wish we'd got a candle," said Kathleen.
"Yes, it does," Gerald contradicted "could see nothing. But their
dauntless leader, whose eyes had grown used to the dark while the
clumsy forms of the others were bunging up the entrance, had made a
discovery.
"Oh, what!" Both the others were used to Gerald's way of telling a story
while he acted it, but they did sometimes wish that he didn't talk quite
so long and so like a book in moments of excitement.
"He did not reveal the dread secret to his faithful followers till one and
all had given him their word of honour to be calm."
"We'll be calm all right," said Jimmy impatiently."Well, then," said
Gerald, ceasing suddenly to be a book and becoming a boy, "there's a
light over there look behind you!"
They looked. And there was. A faint greyness on the brown walls of the
cave, and a brighter greyness cut off sharply by a dark line, showed that
round a turning or angle of the cave there was daylight.
"Attention!" said Gerald; at least, that was what he meant, though what
he said was "Shun!" as becomes the son of a soldier. The others
mechanically obeyed.
"You will remain at attention till I give the word "Slow march!' on
which you will advance cautiously in open order, following your hero
leader, taking care not to tread on the dead and wounded."
"I wish you wouldn't!" said Kathleen.
"There aren't any," said Jimmy, feeling for her hand in the dark; "he

only means, take care not to tumble over stones and things"
Here he found her hand, and she screamed.
"It's only me," said Jimmy. "I thought you'd like me to hold it. But
you're just like a girl."
Their eyes had now begun to get accustomed to the darkness, and all
could see that they were in a rough stone cave, that went straight on for
about three or four yards and then turned sharply to the right.
"Death or victory!" remarked Gerald. "Now, then Slow march!"
He advanced carefully, picking his way among the loose earth and
stones that were the floor of the cave.
"A sail, a sail!" he cried, as he turned the corner.
"How splendid!" Kathleen drew a long breath as she came out into the
sunshine.
"I don't see any sail," said Jimmy, following.
The narrow passage ended in a round arch all fringed with ferns and
creepers. They passed through the arch into a deep, narrow gully whose
banks were of stones, moss-covered; and in the crannies grew more
ferns and long grasses. Trees growing on the top of the bank arched
across, and the sunlight came through in changing patches of brightness,
turning the gully to a roofed corridor of goldy-green. The path, which
was of greeny-grey flagstones where heaps of leaves had drifted, sloped
steeply down, and at the end of it was another round arch, quite dark
inside, above which rose rocks and grass and bushes.
"It's like the outside of a railway tunnel," said James.
"It's the entrance to the enchanted castle," said Kathleen. "Let's blow
the horns."
"Dry up!" said Gerald. "The bold Captain, reproving the silly chatter of

his subordinates ,"
"I like that!" said Jimmy, indignant.
"I thought you would," resumed Gerald "of his subordinates, bade them
advance with caution and in silence, because after all there might be
somebody about, and the other arch might be an ice-house or
something dangerous.
"What?" asked Kathleen anxiously.
"Bears, perhaps," said Gerald briefly.
"There aren't any bears without bars in England, anyway," said Jimmy.
"They call bears bars in America," he