272 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



its crinkled flowers of dull gold, the entrance has a specific 

 character ; and quite another when the glossy leaves of the 

 umbrella-tree form the relief and its long radiating spikes 

 of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant sun-bird, 

 and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when 

 the sea is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and 

 grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch — 

 the entrance to something unknowable and unknown — at 

 least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and 

 they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. 

 How a long, long time ago, a big njan, " all a same debil-debil," 

 took out with his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it 

 "on top alonga Hinchinbrook." Now the particular de- 

 capitated pinnacle of Hinchinbrook is 20 miles away, 

 and out of all proportion. But these facts do not affect the 

 legitimacy of the legend. There is the hole, and there on 

 the top of the far-away mountain the prodigious plug 

 demonstrative evidence too obvious to be set aside on any 

 such plea as the eternal fitness of things. Is not the blue 

 point of the mountain a defiantly triumphant fact ? Is not 

 the legend authenticated by tradition and confirmed by 

 topography ? 



Why, therefore, doubt it for a moment ? 



And the hole — it goes a long, long way under the 

 mountain. It is a bad place, a very bad place. No one 

 has ever been there. Suppose any fella go inside, bi'mby 

 that fella sick, bi'mby that fella die. 



Braving all the honest traditions, one fine day I took a 

 lantern in the boat and induced the boys to row to the 

 entrance of the cave. Neither would venture in ; indeed, 

 they did all they could to dissuade me, protesting that evil 

 was sure to befall. A minute's exploration showed that 

 the cave did not extend 30 feet, and that it was dry, and 

 resonant with " the whispering sound of the cool colonnade," 

 with no suggestion of unwholesomeness or weirdness. But 

 the blacks still pass it by. The legend is as indestructible 

 as the odour of attar of roses. Although the boys persist 

 in their account of the origin of the cave, it is known to 



