Now I think at this time I had three ambitions. The winning of the knife was one, perhaps the chief one. Next to that I wanted to find some quite new hiding-place where even my father wouldn't be able to find me. That he had hiding-places out of my knowledge I was only too sadly aware, but so far, as well as I knew the coast and the countryside, I hadn't succeeded in baffling his pursuit. My third great ambition was to find some underground communication between the shore and the woodland. I assumed that such a communication existed, and I explored all the caves and inlets for miles along the coast, but so far without success. There were long caverns eating far into the cliffs, some slippery with sea-weed, some above the line of the high tides where the going was fairly easy; but none gave me the passage I was seeking. There were several caves that I particularly suspected of concealing the desired secret. There was one which I named the Dragon's Mouth; for, following my father's lead, I gave my own names to all the landmarks of the place, not being satisfied as a rule with the rather unimaginative names which custom had christened them with. This cave I named the Dragon's Mouth because blocking the opening was one huge rock like the tongue of some colossal monster thrust out through its jaws. I believed that if only the creature would draw in its tongue I should find the passage of my desires. Then there was Ebb-Tide Cave opening into Ebb-Tide Pool. I believe this name was of my father's giving. At high tide the pool, which was well hidden with a wall of rock, and invisible from the top of the cliff, which dropped steeply to a level platform and swelled out into a huge overbrowing arch of granite, was open to the sea through a twisting channel where a fair-sized boat might pass, I thought; and many were the dreams I fancied to myself of the coming and going of secret ships. But at low water the channel was closed, and so in stormy weather Ebb-Tide Pool was an ideal bathing-place. At high tide the cave was also in deep water, but dry, or nearly so, at low tide. But the baffling puzzle of the cave was that it stopped abruptly after some twenty yards, blankly walled with two great flattish rocks which looked for all the world like the two halves of a huge gate. And many a day I spent searching for the secret of their opening, but never with any hint of success.