the Shell Cove, so the rest o’ the tunnel be cool and dry. Bit mouldy mind ye, but cool and dry. Just this first part ye be watchin’ ye feet.”
Barney tested the rope. “Now I be releasin' me rope as I go. Ye should be holdin’ tight te the rope as ye come down the steps. Keep ye torches up, and watch ye feet. There be some holes and sech and, the steps are maybe rotten in places. But not fer long. I be testin’ ‘em before ye step on ‘em anyway but ye still need care.”
Barney moved slowly off down the tunnel, gingerly testing each step as he went and poking at the tunnel roof and walls with the end of his pick. But the roof and walls were all solid rock. We climbed through the opening one at a time, following Barney down the steps, treading carefully and playing our torches over the slime covered walls and roof, dripping with long green stalactites of wet moss and rock crystal. Barney led the way down the steps of the tunnel while we clung to the rope he played out behind. Max and George followed Barney, followed by me, followed by Charlie. Dad brought up the rear.
We picked our way steadily down the steps, our torches showing the way. Some lengths of the tunnel were lined with bricks, and in some places there were small niches with what looked like the remains of old oil lamps. These were covered in mould and rust. The smugglers must have used these when they did the run to Smugglers Cove.
Even though there was a lot of mould and slime we could still see that the bricks had been well laid. The steps were square and firm beneath our feet, despite Barney’s warning, and the layered bricks in the walls and the zigzagging brick patterns formed in parts an arched roof. But mostly it was all rock. After about forty steps Barney stopped and pointed his torch at the roof.
“Jest look at that” he said, shaking his head. “Those Looers be right good builders. Jest look at the brickwork, still standin’ solid these two hunnert years and more. And the path be right good, the steps wide and not too high. The smugglers could carry their barrels down the Run right quick.” Barney was right. The tunnel was high and wide and dry, and the steps were easy to use. Each step was at least half a metre wide. The smugglers would have been able to run up and down the tunnel quite easily. I guess you needed to be quick if the Revenooer was around.
Barney turned his torch back down the tunnel. Right in front of us was a small landing. The tunnel turned left on the other side of the landing. Barney stepped down and pointed his torch around the bend. “Aye, the way be clear. And dry too.” After pausing for a moment to hammer in another piton, Barney waved us forward.
“This next section is a long one. I think we best be checkin’ the map.” Dad passed Rohan’s map down along the line to Barney who peered at it under his torch. “I reckon we be at the first bend” he said. “There be a long run, mebbe fifty or sixty steps I think, then another turn, this time te the right. Then we be havin’ two short runs o’ steps before we be hittin’ the junction te the Princess Cave. Now I be stoppin’ every ten metres or so te drive home a piton so just be waitin’ on me when I do that.” Barney did a quick loop around the head of the piton to keep the rope taught then stepped past the corner and into the next section of the Run.
We negotiated the next three sections easily. The walls were dry and firm and our torches showed the tunnel in glaring detail. Just past the second bend we came across a small alcove cut into the rock. This part had a small bench cut out of the granite. We shone our torches around.
In one corner was blackened area with a small pile of ashes and some small chunks of rotted wood. And nearby were pieces of what appeared to be broken pottery. It looked like someone had cooked a meal here. A long time ago. Over two hundred years ago I asked myself? Then George yelled and pointed up high in the alcove, above the fireplace. Barney pointed his torch upwards and we saw that words had been scratched into the rock. We pushed in as far as we could but the alcove was too small. Only Barney, George and Max could fit.
“What does it say?” said Charlie. “Who wrote it?”
“Well this be interestin’, that’s fer sure” said Barney. “It be two names, just rightly. And by different hands far as anyone kin tell. And the names be names we know. They be James Herriott and Martin Haggley, and they be dated too. 1737 it seem. So it be lookin’ like young Jim and Martin were mebbe cookin’ here some time. But when? It must be takin’ place some time before they was lost in December ’37. Right sad it be, don’t ye think?”
Everyone was quiet. Barney was right. After Barney’s story, and after reading the journals of Leslie and Rohan, we had begun to feel that we knew the Looeers. Leslie, Jimmy, Rohan, Ned, Purtaph, their ‘good’ wives, and the other fishermen, David Swain, Roger Docherty and Martin Haggley. Until now it had only been a story. But seeing the remains of the fire, the old pottery and the scratched names in the rock, brought home to us just how real it was.
We continued down the tunnel, Barney pausing every now and then to drive a piton into the rock wall. As we moved downhill towards the fourth bend in the tunnel Barney paused. He peered down at Rohan’s map. “If the map be right, the junction to the Princess Cave be right close” he said. “Mebbe we soon be findin’ out what happened?”
As we filed around the fourth bend, the tunnel began to widen, until it opened suddenly into a cave filled with strange shadows and a dank, salty smell. The pick marked tunnel floor stopped and was replaced with rough outcrops of dark granite, soaring to a cave roof far above, spotted with white stalactites where minerals had leached through the rock. The steps now were narrow, cut roughly from the granite and winding steeply downwards between stalagmites that reached up from the floor, each one as if melting under a pink and green coating of dissolved minerals. There were pools of water everywhere, reflecting the lights of our torches onto the cave roof like a laser light show and casting flickering shadows across the walls.
Barney paused and scratched his head. “I bain’t be understandin’ this map” he said. ‘Fer jest a moment there I be thinkin’ we found the Princess Cave. But this bain’t be the Princess Cave, it couldna be. And it bain’t be marked on the map neither. It be right confusin’. Fer the map be marked with a junction, where the Run splits off te the Princess Cave. And I be lookin’ fer the junction but blowed if I be seein’ it. And I be right sure we dint pass no junction on the way down.”
As we stepped carefully down the old rock steps, we shone our torches around. The cave was quite large, and the steps had been cut right through the middle. We could see an opening low down on the far wall, beyond a large dark pool, and we pushed on. If this wasn’t the Princess Cave then what was it? Where did the tunnel on the far wall lead to? Would it lead us to the Princess Cave?
“Maybe it’s a little further down the tunnel” said Dad. “Let’s keep going. We’ve come quite a way so we can’t be far from the junction, or the Cave or Smugglers Cove.”
“Aye. Mebbe that’s right” said Barney, folding the map and bending slightly to enter the tunnel. The tunnel descended steeply from the cave. Barney tried to hammer a piton into the rock but the rock fell away in soft lumps. Barney held his torch up close to the walls of the tunnel. “Hmmm” he said. “We be close down by the water I’m thinkin’. The salt be rottin’ everything. I’m thinkin’ mebbe we should be turnin’ back.”
But it didn’t matter. As Barney shone his torch around it flashed across a wall of fallen rock, not more than twenty steps further down the tunnel. We saw large boulders, shattered and cracked and mixed with sand and slivers of crushed rock. The tunnel had caved in. We couldn’t go any further. Where were we? And what had happened to the Princess Cave? Maybe the map was inaccurate, as Dad had suggested in the library. Dad pushed his way to the front to join Barney and they stared at the map, frowning deeply and shaking their heads.
After a while Dad glanced up. “We’re stumped” he said. Barney nodded in agreement, looking miserable. “We know where we are” said Dad. “But we have no idea where the Cave is.” Dad pointed to the wall of rocks. “The Revenooer blew up the tunnel opening on to Shell Be
ach in Smugglers Cove. This is the cave-in that blocked the entrance. I think that’s certain. There’s no way through it so we have to go back. We’ve followed the Run and it’s loosley as shown on Rohan’s map. The distances aren’t right, we know that, and none of the bends in the tunnel were shown accurately. We’re shooting blind here. It’s just the Princess Cave - where is it?”
While we stood there, sweeping our torches around and wondering what to do next, George placed her torch upright between two large rocks, pointing it at the ceiling of the tunnel. The light reflected back down on us and seemed to brighten the whole area. And our spirits as well. The walls were clear of slime and moss but the ceiling dripped small stalactites and drops of water. We found a couple of rocks to sit on and unpacked some water and chocolate. While we sipped we discussed our next steps.
“It’s pretty neat really” said Max, flicking his torch up under his face, looking slightly devilish. “After more than two hundred years of searching we’ve found the tunnel. We even found some names and stuff. I think it’s awesome.”
“Me too!” said Charlie. “I thought Cornwall would be really dumb but we’ve had a