O'Brien at once saw that he had made a mistake, that Phelan's words were perfectly consistent with ignorance of what he knew of the Fahey affair--or, indeed, with the absence of intention to refer to the Fahey affair. He hastened to put himself right. "Of course you do, Phelan," said he cordially. "No man knows more than you. Excuse me for what I said. I was thinking of something else when you spoke, and I did not exactly hear what you said. I did not mean to annoy you. I was only stupid myself." Jim Phelan considered this a very handsome and ample apology, not only for the words just then spoken, but for what had occurred a few minutes before. "He was thinking, poor gentleman," thought Phelan, "of those blackguards of Commissioners. I know how anxious a man gets about fish." "He was thinking," thought Alfred, "of Madge. I know all about that kind of thing." He had not been thinking of one or the other. He was wondering how Mrs. Davenport would have been affected if the figure of Fahey suddenly rose before her on that Rock. "This, sir," said the boatman, addressing Alfred, the stranger, "is what we call the Red Gap, and the cave beyond is what we call the Red Gap Cave--or the Gap Cave, or the Red Cave, for short." Alfred looked around him, and then up. Above towered the great perpendicular cliffs, silent and forlorn. From the dark green water at their bases, to the hard, dark line they made against the azure plain of sky that roofed the chasm, was no break, in form or colour, no noteworthy ledge or hollow, no clinging weeds below or verdurous patch above. All was smooth, and bluff, and huge, and liver-coloured. A peculiar silence, a silence of a new and startling quality, filled the gigantic cleft. The silence abroad upon the sea was that in which vast spaciousness engulfed sound. Here adamantine walls, beetling and threatening, a thousand feet thick, stood between the stagnant air and the large breathings of the sea. The atmosphere was dense, motionless, inert with salt vapours. The prodigious circumvallation of cliff crushed vitality out of the air. There was a breathless whisper of water against the sea line of the ramparts, and deep in the gorge of the cave a smothered snore, like the hushed breathing of some stupendous monster. The yawl glided slowly up between the closing walls of the Red Gap. No one spoke. The two boatmen were indifferent to the place. O'Brien and Paulton were lost in thoughts of diverse kinds, awakened by the spectacle of Mrs. Davenport on the Black Rock. None of the men was paying attention to the Gap. At last a sudden darkness fell upon the boat. O'Brien and Paulton looked up. The sky was no longer overhead. A gloom of purple brown was above them. The light of day stood like a lofty, luminous pillar in their wake. They had entered the Red Cave. The boatmen ceased rowing, and Phelan lit a torch.