I waited till the Captain had retired, shooting the bolts behind the closed door before I crept from cover and cautiously made my escape. My heart was bitterly sore at the thought of all the love I was leaving: the Captain wanting me back as though I were his son, yet unable to frame a message for me, thinking I might make fun of his affection, and doubtless wondering why I had changed my lodging without sending him word; and my little Jenny perhaps crying herself to sleep with my name on her lips, her pride broken by longing and anxiety and doubt. My own eyes were none too dry, nor was my breathing very certain, as I slipped back to my lodging and hastily packed my knapsack. Then heedless of Dirk's injunctions I stepped out into the night before my resolution should waver, and set forth once more for the _Dolphin_ and the mystery that lay like a shadow of blood over the wonderful coast about Ebb-Tide Pool. CHAPTER XXX DRIFT-WOOD CAVERN The sight of the familiar scene where I had spent so many happy summers, and where I had received one desolating blow, seemed to clear and steady my mind. Sometimes I would remember only the passionate hours of climbing and swimming I had known there, and would revert to the delighted boy I had been not so very long ago. But always the shadow would fall about me again; yet, although it toned down my joy at being back in the country of my heart, it didn't cloud me from a steady pursuing of the purpose I had set myself to accomplish. First of all I re-explored every nook and cranny I had ever visited; and that alone was the work of some days. I reserved Drift-Wood Cavern for the last, intending to devote all my energies to tracing it to its source when once I had satisfied myself that there was nothing else to learn from the coast to either side of it. In the evenings I sat up by the open window, or, when darkness had fallen, by the light of my lamp, studying the papers my father had left behind him. The priest's manuscript was of little use to me. Its drenching in the sea hadn't increased its clarity, and as I understood little Latin the text was of no help. I turned to the map, and tried to wrest the secret from it; but you can't get the secret from a thing which isn't there. The fragment that held the clue simply didn't exist, and it was impossible to reconstruct it except with baseless imaginings.