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Should I pretend to have accidentally discovered the grave, lead the party to it, and then again accidentally discover the tunnel? This plan had its merits but I discarded it, for fear that something would be found in the cave to direct attention to the Island Queen. Then I reflected that very likely the explorers would work round the island far enough to find the sea-mouth of the cave.
The narrow-gauge of the N.P.C.R.R. crawls like a snake from the ferry on the bay to the roundhouse over and beyond the hills, but seven miles from the sea-mouth of the Russian River.
In the eleventh century the great port and arsenal were at Morrano and S. Marco al Belvedere, which were then still islands. The sea-mouth was between Grado and S. Pietro d'Oro, where the pharos was. The city was founded in 181 B.C., and its name is said to have originated in the appearance of an eagle which was seen while the plan was being laid out.
Seventy feet below, on the narrow strip of sand before the sea-mouth of the cave, we saw the figures of four men, who ran wildly about and sought for a foothold on the sheer face of the cliff. As we stood watching them, with, on my part, at least, unexpected qualms of pity and a cold interior sensation very unlike triumph, they discovered us.
The cave which was now the center of our hopes I say our, because somehow or other I found myself hoping and fearing along with the rest, though carefully concealing it ran under the point at its farther end. The sea-mouth of the cave was protected from the full swell of the ocean by some huge detached rocks rising a little way offshore, which caught and broke the waves.
Ruim at that time must have consisted almost entirely of open down, sloping upward from the tidal Wantsum, and extending a little farther out to sea than at the present moment. Pegwell Bay was then a wide sea-mouth; Sandwich flats did not yet exist; and the Stour itself fell into the Wantsum Strait at the place which still bears the historic name of Stourmouth.