hens clucked quietly, puzzled at finding themselves in such a strange dark place, but quite happy with the children there.
When the meal was over Jack went back to his post again. He sat just inside the cave-entrance and listened.
The men were getting puzzled and disheartened. They were sitting at the foot of the hill, eating sandwiches and drinking beer. Jack could hear their voices quite plainly.
“Well, those children may have been on this island, and I think they were - but they’re not here now,” said one man. “I’m certain of that.”
“We’ve hunted every inch,” said another man. “I think you’re right, Tom; those kids have been here all right - who else could have planted those runner beans we found? - but they’ve gone. I expect that boy the policeman saw last Wednesday gave the alarm, and they’ve all gone off in the boat.”
“Ah yes, the boat!” said a third man. “Now, if the children were here we’d find a boat, wouldn’t we? Well, we haven’t found one - so they can’t be here!”
“Quite right,” said the first man. “I didn’t think of that. If there’s no boat here, there are no children! What about going back now? I’m sure it’s no good hunting any more.”
“There’s just one place we haven’t looked,” said the quiet voice of the fourth man.
“There are some caves in this hillside - it’s possible those children may have hidden there.”
“Caves!” said another man. “Yes - just the place. We’ll certainly look there. Where are they?”
“I’ll show you in a minute,” said the fourth man. “Got a torch?”
“No, but I’ve got plenty of matches,” said the other man. “But look here - they can’t be there if there’s no boat anywhere to be seen. If they are here, there must be a boat somewhere!”
“It’s possible for a boat to be sunk so that no searcher could find it,” said the fourth man.
“Children would never think of that!” said another.
“No, I don’t think they would,” was the answer.
Jack, who could hear everything, thought gratefully of Mike. It had been Mike’s idea to sink the boat. If he hadn’t sunk it, it would certainly have been found, for the search had been much more thorough than Jack had guessed. Fancy the men noticing the runner beans!
“Come on,” said a man. “We’ll go to those caves now. But it’s a waste of time. I don’t think the children are within miles! They’ve gone off up the lakeside somewhere in their boat!"
Jack crawled silently back to the inner cave, his heart thumping loudly.
“They don’t think we’re on the island,” he whispered, “because they haven’t found the boat. But they’re coming to explore the caves. Put out the lantern, Mike. Now everyone must keep as quiet as a mouse. Is Daisy lying down? Good! The hens are quiet enough, too. They seem to think it’s night, and are roosting in a row! Now nobody must sneeze or cough - everything depends on the next hour or two!”
Not a sound was to be heard in the big inner cave. Daisy lay like a log, breathing quietly. The hens roosted peacefully. The children sat like mice.
And then they heard the men coming into the cave outside. Matches were struck - and the passage that led to their cave was found!
“Look here, Tom,” said a voice. “Here’s what looks like a passage - shall we see where it goes?”
“We’d better, I suppose,” said a voice. And then there came the sound of footsteps down the blocked-up passage!
Chapter XVIII - The End of the Search
The children sat in the inner cave as though they were turned into stone. They did not even blink their eyes. It seemed almost as if they did not even breathe! But how their hearts thumped! Jack thought that everyone must hear his heart beating, even the searchers outside, it bumped against his ribs so hard.
The children could hear the sound of someone fumbling his way along the narrow passage. He found it a tight squeeze, by his groanings and grumblings. He came right up to the place where the children had piled rocks, stones, and earth to block up the passage.
“I say!” the man called back to the others, “the passage ends here in what looks like loose rocks. Shall I try to force my way through - pull the rocks to see if they are just a fall from the roof?”
“No!” cried another man. “If you can’t get through, the children couldn’t! This is a wild-goose chase - we’ll never find the children in these caves. Come back, Tom.”
The man turned himself round with difficulty and began to squeeze back - and at that very moment a dreadful thing happened!
Daisy the cow let out a terrific moo!
The children were not expecting it, and they almost jumped out of their skins with fright. Then they clutched at one another, expecting the men to come chasing along at once, having heard Daisy.
There was an astonished silence. Then one of the men said, “Did you hear that?”
“Of course!” said another. “What in the wide world was it?”
“Well, it wasn’t the children, that’s certain!” said the first, with a laugh. “I
never in my life heard a child make a noise like that!”
“It sounded like a cow,” said another voice.
“A cow!” cried the first man, “what next? Do you mean to say you think there’s a cow in the middle of this hill, Tom?”
“Of course there can’t be,” said Tom, laughing. “But it sounded mighty like one!
Let’s listen and see if we hear anything again.”
There was a silence, as if the men were listening - and at that moment Daisy most obligingly gave a dreadful hollow cough, that echoed mournfully round and round the cave.
“I don’t like it,” said a man’s voice. “It sounds too queer for anything. Let’s get out of these dark caves into the sunshine. I’m perfectly certain, since we heard those noises, that no children would be inside those caves! Why, they’d be frightened out of their lives!”
Jack squeezed Nora’s hand in delight. So old Daisy had frightened the men! What a glorious joke! The children sat as still as could be, glad now that Daisy had given such a loud moo and such a dreadful cough.
There was the sound of scrambling about in the outer cave and then it seemed as if the men were all outside again. “We’d better just hunt about and see if there are any more caves,” said one man. "Look, that seems like one!”
“That’s the cave where we put the hens when the trippers came!” whispered Jack.
“It’s got no passage leading to our inner cave here. They can explore that all they like.”
The men did explore it, but as it was just a cave and nothing else, and had no passage leading out of it, they soon left it. Then they found the cave with the low-down, tiny entrance - the one the children used to squeeze into when they wanted to go to their inner cave - but, as Jack had said, the entrance was too small for any grown up to use, and, after trying once or twice, the men gave it up.
“No one could get in there except a rabbit,” said a man’s voice.
“Children could,” said another.
“Now look here, Tom, if we find children on this island now, I’ll