I’d known of the cave beneath the cliff
For a year, or maybe more,
And I’d often said to Jill, ‘What if…’
But we’d not been there before.
It was only at the lowest tide
That the entrance could be seen,
We’d have to dive, to swim inside
And for that, Jill wasn’t keen.
For the cave lay in a tiny cove
With towering cliffs above,
‘So how are we going to get down there,
To swim,’ said Jill, ‘my love,’
We’ll hire a boat and we’ll cruise around
With our gear, from Canning Bay,
Which is what we did with our scuba tanks
On a fresh, mid-winter day.
It took a couple of hours or more
To get to the favoured spot,
The sea was calm, we secured the boat
Next to a giant rock,
Then over the side we went, and swam
Toward that narrow gap,
Then dived below with the tidal flow
There was just the one mishap.
Jill caught her tank on the overhang
And it nicked her feeder hose,
She still had air, but I had to stare
As a stream of bubbles rose,
We swam right into the inner cave
Where the roof gave us more height,
So up we came to the air again
And I lit my small flashlight.
The walls reflected the sudden beam
In a thousand different ways,
There were reds and greens, and even cream
In a host of coloured sprays,
Then further on as we swam along
Was a ledge we clambered on,’
And there the bones of a longboat lay
From a time, both dead and gone.
And further in was a pile of bones
Of some poor, benighted soul,
Caught in hell in this prison cell
When the tide began to roll,
He must have come when the tide was low
And sailed in through the gap,
Then stayed too late, there was no escape
Once the tide had closed the trap.
And close by him lay an iron chest
With its bands all rusted through,
Full of coins, of gold Moidores
And Spanish Dollars too.
But Jill became so excited by
The glitter of the stuff,
That she’d forgotten the fractured hose,
Or to turn her Oxy off.
I played the light up above the bones
Where a script was scratched in the wall,
‘God help me, I was cast in here
By the crew of the ‘One for All,’
They told me to hide the treasure here
And would pick me up at eleven,
But then the entrance disappeared,’
It was ‘1797.’
Jill’s tank was empty when we looked,
So I said I’d leave her there,
Go back and pick up another tank
But her face was filled with fear.
It’s been a week since I left her there
For the sea’s blown up, as well,
And the entrance to the cave has gone
Under a ten foot swell.
I’d give all the coin, and gold doubloons
Just to get my woman back,
But there’s been a great white pointer there,
I’m afraid of a shark attack.
If she just can last till the sea goes down
I shall go to that awful cave,
But the thought I’ve fought since I left her there,
‘It may be my woman’s grave.’
David Lewis Paget