Prester John | Page 5

crosses the damp bit of gravel, and
the water has scarcely filled the holes yet.'
We did not dare to question Archie's woodcraft, but it puzzled us who
the stranger could be. In summer weather you might find a party of
picnickers here, attracted by the fine hard sands at the burn mouth. But
at this time of night and season of the year there was no call for any one
to be trespassing on our preserves. No fishermen came this way, the
lobster-pots being all to the east, and the stark headland of the Red Neb
made the road to them by the water's edge difficult. The tan- work lads
used to come now and then for a swim, but you would not find a
tan-work lad bathing on a chill April night. Yet there was no question
where our precursor had gone. He was making for the shore. Tam
unshuttered his lantern, and the steps went clearly down the corkscrew
path. 'Maybe he is after our cave. We'd better go cannily.'
The glim was dowsed - the words were Archie's - and in the best
contraband manner we stole down the gully. The business had suddenly
taken an eerie turn, and I think in our hearts we were all a little afraid.
But Tam had a lantern, and it would never do to turn back from an
adventure which had all the appearance of being the true sort. Half way
down there is a scrog of wood, dwarf alders and hawthorn, which
makes an arch over the path. I, for one, was glad when we got through
this with no worse mishap than a stumble from Tam which caused the
lantern door to fly open and the candle to go out. We did not stop to
relight it, but scrambled down the screes till we came to the long slabs
of reddish rock which abutted on the beach. We could not see the track,
so we gave up the business of scouts, and dropped quietly over the big
boulder and into the crinkle of cliff which we called our cave.

There was nobody there, so we relit the lantern and examined our
properties. Two or three fishing-rods for the burn, much damaged by
weather; some sea-lines on a dry shelf of rock; a couple of wooden
boxes; a pile of driftwood for fires, and a heap of quartz in which we
thought we had found veins of gold - such was the modest furnishing of
our den. To this I must add some broken clay pipes, with which we
made believe to imitate our elders, smoking a foul mixture of coltsfoot
leaves and brown paper. The band was in session, so following our
ritual we sent out a picket. Tam was deputed to go round the edge of
the cliff from which the shore was visible, and report if the coast was
clear.
He returned in three minutes, his eyes round with amazement in the
lantern light. 'There's a fire on the sands,' he repeated, 'and a man
beside it.'
Here was news indeed. Without a word we made for the open, Archie
first, and Tam, who had seized and shuttered his lantern, coming last.
We crawled to the edge of the cliff and peered round, and there sure
enough, on the hard bit of sand which the tide had left by the burn
mouth, was a twinkle of light and a dark figure.
The moon was rising, and besides there was that curious sheen from the
sea which you will often notice in spring. The glow was maybe a
hundred yards distant, a little spark of fire I could have put in my cap,
and, from its crackling and smoke, composed of dry seaweed and
half-green branches from the burnside thickets. A man's figure stood
near it, and as we looked it moved round and round the fire in circles
which first of all widened and then contracted.
The sight was so unexpected, so beyond the beat of our experience, that
we were all a little scared. What could this strange being want with a
fire at half-past eight of an April Sabbath night on the Dyve Burn sands?
We discussed the thing in whispers behind a boulder, but none of us
had any solution. 'Belike he's come ashore in a boat,' said Archie. 'He's
maybe a foreigner.' But I pointed out that, from the tracks which Archie
himself had found, the man must have come overland down the cliffs.
Tam was clear he was a madman, and was for withdrawing promptly

from the whole business.
But some spell kept our feet tied there in that silent world of sand and
moon and sea. I remember looking back and seeing the solemn,
frowning faces of the cliffs, and feeling