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Beneath us, as we slip into it, I can see rocks fully twenty feet down. The water is clear as air. This is the Shin-Kukedo, called the New Cavern, though assuredly older than human record by a hundred thousand years. A more beautiful sea-cave could scarcely be imagined.
I do not wonder that the Greeks peopled every cove and sea-cave with divinities, and built temples on every headland and rocky islet here; that the Romans built upon the Grecian ruins; that the ecclesiastics in succeeding centuries gained possession of all the heights, and built convents and monasteries, and set out vineyards, and orchards of olives and oranges, and took root as the creeping plants do, spreading themselves abroad in the sunshine and charming air.
Similarly, in Italy, much of the charm of marble, of the sea-cave shimmer, of certain palace-yards and churches, is due to the knowledge that this lovely, noble substance is easy to cut and quarried in vast quantities hard by: no wretched rarity like diamonds and rubies, which diminish by the worth of a family's yearly keep if only the cutter cuts one hair-breadth wrong!
Throwing himself down on the sand that was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom that had waited, how long, for its bee. The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was like a great body he cleaved to.
His priest is the King of all the Bubis, upon whom it is never permitted to a white man, or a Porto, to gaze. Baumann also gives the residence of another important spirit as being the grotto at Banni. This is a sea-cave, only accessible at low water in calm weather. I have heard many legends of this cave, but have never had an opportunity of seeing it, or any one who has seen it first hand.
After that we sought the sea-cave each time we woke, and whenever the light was in it we sat there, and ate, and talked of all we had done, and thought, and feared, and hoped, during those long months when we were apart.
He would go to a gallery of ancient or modern art, and find that there many pictures had no message or voice for him; and then some inconspicuous picture would suddenly appeal to him with a mysterious force the pathetic glance of childish eyes, or an old face worn by toil and transfigured by some inner light of hopefulness; or a woodland scene, tree-trunks rising amid a copse; or the dark water of a sea-cave, lapping, translucent and gem-like, round rock ledges; or a reedy pool, with the chimneys of an old house rising among elms hard by: in a moment the mood would come upon him, and he would feel that a door had been opened for his spirit into a place of sweet imaginings, of wistful peace, bringing to him a hope of something that might assuredly be, some deep haven of God where the soul might float upon a golden tide.
Rising in torment from the hearth to pace unceasingly the length and breadth of the restful, studious room, so closely secure from the outer turmoil of heaven and earth, he is once more back in the unknown sea-cave, in front of the angry breakers.
The two porters were Yandjali men, they knew nothing of these woods, and were utterly useless as guides; they sat now amidst the leaves near the tent eating their food; dark shadows in the glow-worm light, the glistening black skin of a knee or shoulder showing up touched by the glimmer in which leaf and liana, tree trunk and branch, seemed like marine foliage bathed in the watery light of a sea-cave.
The streetward door of the Judgment Hall was open, and a great crowd of people stood about, silent, anxious, respectful. Some of them talked in low tones, and whenever there was a word passed out of the door, within which men looked ten deep, it scattered all about like a wave which comes into a sea-cave by a narrow entrance, and then widens out till it breaks gently in the wide inner hall.
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