The Rocks of Valpré | Page 2

come soon I shall go and find the Knight of the Magic Cave all by myself."
But even this threat did not move the enthusiastic Cinders. All that could be seen of him was a pair of sturdy hind-legs firmly planted amid a whirl of sand. Quite plainly it was nothing to him what steps his young mistress might see fit to take to relieve her boredom.
"All right!" said Chris, springing to her feet with a flourish of her towel. "Then good-bye!"
She shook the hair back from her face, slipped her bare feet into sandals, slung the towel across her shoulders, and turned her face to the cliffs.
They frowned above the rock-strewn beach to a height of two hundred feet, tunnelled here and there by the sea, scored here and there by springs, rising mass upon mass, in some places almost perpendicular, in others overhanging.
They possessed an immense fascination for Chris Wyndham, these cliffs. There was a species of dreadful romance about them that attracted even while it awed her. She longed to explore them, and yet deep in the most private recesses of her soul she was half-afraid. So many terrible stories were told of this particular corner of the rocky coast. So many ships were wrecked, so many lives were lost, so many hopes were quenched forever between the cliffs and the sea.
But these facts did not prevent her weaving romances about those wonderful caves. For instance, there was the Magic Cave, for which she was bound now, the entrance to which was only accessible at low tide. There was something particularly imposing about this entrance, something palatial, that stirred the girl's quick fancy. She had never before quite reached it on account of the difficulty of the approach; but she had promised herself that she would do so sooner or later, when time and tide should permit.
Both chanced to be favourable on this particular afternoon, and she set forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his monotonous but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched between her and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep shadow of the cliff--a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a low Gothic archway.
"I'm sure it's haunted," said Chris, and fell forthwith to dreaming as she stepped along the sunlit sand.
Of course she would find an enchanted hall, peopled by crabs that were not crabs at all, but the afore-mentioned knight and his retinue, all bound by the same wicked spell. "And I shall have to find out what it is and set him free," said Chris, with a sigh of pleasurable anticipation. "And then, I suppose, he will begin to jabber French, and I shall wish to goodness I hadn't. I expect he will want to marry me, poor thing! And I shall have to explain--in French, ugh!--that as he is only a foreigner I couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, entertain such a preposterous notion for a single instant. No, I am afraid that would sound rather rude. How else could I put it?"
Chris's brow wrinkled over the problem. She had reached the outlying rocks of the belt she had to cross, and was picking her way between the pools in deep abstraction.
"I wonder!" she murmured to herself. "I wonder!"
Then suddenly her rapt expression broke into a merry smile. "I know! Of course! Absurdly easy! I shall tell him that I am under a spell too--bound beyond all chance of escape to marry an Englishman." The sweet face dimpled over the inspiration. "That ought to settle him, unless he is very persevering; in which case of course I should have to tell him--quite kindly--that I really didn't think I could. Fancy marrying a crab--and a French crab too!"
She began to laugh, gaily, irrepressibly, light-heartedly, and skipped on to the first weed-covered rock that obstructed her path. It was an exceedingly slippery perch. She poised herself with arms outspread, with a butterfly grace as airy as her visions.
Away in the distance Cinders, nearing exhaustion, leaned on one elbow and scratched spasmodically with his free paw.
"Good-bye, Cinders!" she called to him in her high young voice. "I'm never coming back any more."
Lightly she waved her hand and sprang for another rock. But her feet slipped on the seaweed, and she splashed down into a pool ankle-deep.
"Bother!" she said, with vehemence. "It's these silly sandals. I'll leave them here till I come back."
She scrambled out again and pulled them off. "If I really don't come back I shan't want them," she reflected, with her merry little smile.
She arranged sandals and towel on the flat surface of a rock and pursued her pilgrimage unhampered.
She certainly managed better without the sandals, but even as it was she slipped and slid a good deal on the treacherous seaweed. It took her considerably longer