Very cautiously I peered over the cliff-face, examining every knob and ledge which might conceal (or lead to) an opening in the rock. No. I could see nothing; the cliff seemed to me to be almost sheer; and though it was low tide, the rocks at the base of the cliffs seemed to conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for him at the end of his journey. Again I looked carefully right to the foot of the crag. No. There was absolutely nothing; I was off the track somehow. Now, just at this point the cliff fell Inland for a few paces, forming a tiny bay about six yards across. To get along the cliff towards Strete I had to turn inland for a few steps, then turn again towards the sea, in order to reach the cliff. I skirted the little bay in this manner, and dropped one or two stones into it from where I stood. As I craned over the edge, watching them fall into the sea, I caught sight of something far below me, in the water. I caught my breath and looked again, but the thing, whatever it was, had disappeared from sight. It was something red, which had gleamed for a moment from behind a rock at the base of the cliff. I watched eagerly for a moment or two, hearing the sucking of the sea along the stones, and the cry of the seagulls' young in their nests on the ledges. Then, very slowly, as the slack water urged it, I saw the red stem-piece of a rather large boat nosing slowly forward apparently from the cliff-face towards the great rock immediately in front of it. The secret was plain in a moment. Here was a cave with a sea-entrance, and a cave big enough to hide a large, seagoing fisher's boat; a cave, too, so perfectly hidden that it could not possibly be seen from any point except right at the mouth. A coastguard's boat could row within three yards of the entrance and never once suspect its being there, unless, at a very low tide, the sea clucked strangely from somewhere within. Any men entering the little bay in a boat would see only the big rock hiding the face of the cliff. No one would suspect that behind the rock lay a big cave accessible from the sea, at low tide in fair weather. Even in foul weather, good boatmen (and all the night-riders were wonderful fellows in a boat) could have made that cave in safety, for at the mouth of the little bay there was a great rock, which shut it in on the southwest side, so that in our bad southwesterly gales the bay or cove would have been sheltered, though full of the foam spattered from the sheltering crag.