"Not another step!" the Princess declared. "I am going back at once."
"I too," Forrest declared. "Your smuggling ancestors, my dear De la Borne, must
indeed have loved adventure, if they spent much of their time crawling about
"As you will," Cecil answered. "The expedition is Miss Jeanne's, not mine."
"And I am going on," Jeanne declared. "I want to see where we come out on the
beach."
"This way, then," Cecil said. "You need not be afraid to walk upright. The roof is
six feet high all the way. You must tread carefully, though. There are plenty of
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
