ere are plenty of holes and stones about."

The Princess and Forrest disappeared. Jeanne, with her skirts held high
in one hand, and an electric torch in the other, followed Cecil slowly
along the gloomy way. The walls were oozing with damp, glistening
patches, like illuminated salt stains, and queer fungi started out from
unexpected places. Sometimes their footsteps fell on the rock, awaking
strange echoes down the gallery. Sometimes they sank deep into the
sand. Cecil looked often behind, and once held out his hand to help his
companion over a difficult place. At last he paused, and she heard him
struggling to turn a key in a great worm-eaten door on their right.

"This is the room," he explained, "where they held their meetings, and
where the stuff was hidden. It was used for more than twenty years, and
the Customs' people never seemed to have had even an inkling of its
existence."

He pushed the door open with difficulty. They found themselves in a
gloomy chamber, with vaulted roof and stone floor. A faint streak of
daylight from an opening somewhere in the roof, partially lit the
place. Here, too, the walls were damp and the odour appalling. There
were some fragments of broken barrels at one end, and an oak table in
the middle of the floor. Jeanne looked round and shivered.

"Let us go on to the end," she said.

Cecil nodded, and they made their way on down the passage.

"The roof is getting lower now," he said. "You had better stoop a
little."

She stopped short.

"What is that?" she asked fearfully.

A sound like rolling thunder, faint at first, but growing more distinct
at every step, broke the chill silence of the place.

"The sea," Cecil answered. "We are getting near to the beach."

Jeanne nodded and crept on. Louder and louder the sound seemed to
become, until at last she paused, half terrified.

"Where are we?" she gasped. "It sounds as though the sea were right
over our heads."

Cecil shook his head.

"It is an illusion," he said. "The sound comes from the air-hole there.
We are forty yards from the cliff still."

They crept on, until at last, after a turn in the gallery, they saw a
faint glimmering of light. A few more yards and they came to a
standstill.

"The entrance is boarded up, you see," Cecil said, "but you can see
through the chinks. There is the sea just below, and the rope ladder
used to hang from these staples."

She looked out. Sheer below was the sea, breaking upon the