sides, having dropped all rude habits at
the entrance; and a pulse of quiet rise and fall opened, and spread to
the discovery of light, tremulous fronds and fans of kelp. The cavern,
expanding and mounting from the long narrow gut of its inlet, shone with
staves of snowy crag wherever the scour of the tide ran round;
bulged and scooped, or peaked and fissured, and sometimes beautifully
sculptured by the pliant tools of water. Above the tide-reach darker
hues prevailed, and more jagged outline, tufted here and there with
yellow, where the lichen freckles spread. And the vault was framed of
mountain fabric, massed with ponderous gray slabs.

All below was limpid water, or at any rate not very muddy, but as bright
as need be for the time of year, and a sea which is not tropical. No one
may hope to see the bottom through ten feet of water on the Yorkshire
coast, toward the end of the month of November; but still it tries to
look clear upon occasion; and here in the caves it settles down, after
even a week free from churning. And perhaps the fog outside had helped
it to look clearer inside; for the larger world has a share of the
spirit of contrariety intensified in man.

Be that as it may, the water was too clear for any hope of sinking tubs
deeper than Preventive eyes could go; and the very honest fellows who
were laboring here had not brought any tubs to sink. All such coarse
gear was shipped off inland, as they vigorously expressed it; and
what they were concerned with now was the cream and the jewel of their
enterprise.

The sea reserved exclusive right of way around the rocky sides, without
even a niche for human foot, so far as a stranger could perceive. At
the furthermost end of the cave, however, the craggy basin had a lip
of flinty pebbles and shelly sand. This was no more than a very narrow
shelf, just enough for a bather to plunge from; but it ran across the
broad end of the cavern, and from its southern corner went a deep dry
fissure mounting out of sight into the body of the cliff. And here the
smugglers were merrily at work.

The nose of their boat was run high upon the shingle; two men on board
of her were passing out the bales, while the other four received them,
and staggered with them up the cranny. Captain Lyth himself was in the
stern-sheets, sitting calmly, but ordering everything, and jotting down
the numbers. Now and then the gentle wash was lifting the brown timbers,
and swelling with a sleepy g