"Light the lantern--quick!" commanded Chris, her misgivings diverted into another channel. "We mustn't lose him. Isn't it cold!"
She shivered in her light dress, but turned inwards resolutely.
"_Tenez_!" exclaimed the Frenchman, quick to catch her mood. "I will go to find the good Cinders. He is not far."
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, then stooped without further words and kindled his lamp.
The rain was still beating in fierce grey gusts over the sea and pattering heavily upon the shingle. The waves broke with a sullen roaring. Evidently a gale was rising.
Chris, with her face to the darkness of the cave, shivered again. Somehow her spirit of adventure was dashed.
The flame of Bertrand's lamp shone vaguely inwards, revealing a narrow passage that wound between rugged cliff-walls into darkness. The rock gleamed black and shiny on all sides. Underfoot were stones of all shapes and sizes, worn smooth by the sea.
"What a ghastly place!" whispered Chris, and something seemed to catch the whisper and repeat it sibilantly a great many times as if learning it off by heart.
"Permit me to precede you," said Bertrand. "You will find it not so narrow in a moment. If you look behind you, you will see the sea as in the frame of a picture. It is beautiful, is it not?"
His soft voice and casual words reassured her. She looked and admired, though the sea was grey and the shore all blurred with rain.
"There will be a rainbow soon," he said. "See! It grows more light already."
But he was looking at her as he spoke, though his glance fell directly she turned towards him.
"Very well," she said eagerly. "Then we won't go any farther when we have found Cinders."
But this last suggestion was not so easy of accomplishment. The darkness had swallowed Cinders as completely as though the jaws of the dragon had closed upon him.
"Where can he be?" said Chris, a quiver of distress in her voice.
"Have no fear! We will find him," Bertrand assured her.
He moved forward, holding the lantern to guide her. She kept very close to him, especially when a curve in the passage hid the entrance behind her. Her fancy for exploring was rapidly dwindling.
As he had told her, the passage soon widened. They emerged into a cave of some size and considerable height.