A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 29

It was with a sigh of relief, and a sudden unstringing of the bow, that he heard outside--

"Mr. Gard!" and with a l.u.s.ty kick, which expressed some of his feeling, he sent his doorway flying and crawled out after it.

The myriad winking stars lifted the roof of the world and the darkness somewhat, sufficient at all events for him to make out that it was not Nance.

"You, Bernel?" he queried, as the only possible alternative.

"Yes, Mr. Gard. I've brought you some more things to eat."

"Good lad! I'm a great trouble to you. Where is Nance? In the boat?"

"No, she couldn't come. That Julie's watching her like a cat. It was she and Peter stirred up the men against you. All day yesterday the whole Island was out looking for you, dead or alive, and very much puzzled as to what had become of you. And Julie's got a suspicion that we know.

They searched the house for you in spite of mother and Grannie, but they won't forget Grannie in a hurry, and I don't think they'll come back,"

and he laughed at the recollection of it.

"What did Grannie do?"

"She just looked at them from under that big black sun-bonnet, and muttered things no one heard. But her eyes were like points of burning sticks, and they all crept out one after another, afraid of they didn't know what. But Julie's been on the watch all day, and would hardly let us out of her sight. But she couldn't watch us both when we were not together. So Nance got a bundle of things ready for you, and then went out with another bundle and Julie followed her, and I slipped off here."

"Bernel, I don't know how to thank you all! What should I have done without you?"

"You'd have been dead, most likely. It's not that they cared much for Tom, you know, but they don't like the idea of a Sark man being killed by a foreigner and no one paying for it."

"But I'm not a foreigner--"

"Yes you are, to them. Of course you're not a Frenchman, but all the same you're not a Sark man. Good thing for you you'd lived with us and we'd got to know you and like you."

"Yes, that was a good thing indeed. I'm only sorry to have brought you trouble and to be such a trouble to you."

"If we thought you'd done it of course we wouldn't trouble. But we know you couldn't have."

"Nothing fresh has turned up?"

"Nothing yet. But Nance says it will, sure. Truth must out, she says."

"It's a weary while of coming out sometimes, Bernel. And I can't spend the rest of my life here, you know."

"She said you were to keep your heart up. You never know what may happen."

"Tell her I can stand it because of all her goodness to me. If I hadn't her to think of I might go mad in time."

"I've brought you a rabbit I snared. Nance cooked it."

"That was good of her. Can you eat puffins' eggs?"

"They want a bit of getting used to," laughed the boy. "But they're better cooked than raw."

"I can cook them. I found part of an old boat, and I've plugged up all the holes in the shelter, and I only light a fire at night. Could I fish here?"

"Too big a sea close in. I've got some in the boat. I put out a line as I came across. I'll leave you some."

"And have you a bottle--or a bailing-tin? Anything I could bring home some water from the pools in? I have to go over there every time I need a drink, and in the dark it's not possible."

"You can have the bailer. It's a new one and sound."

"Now tell me, Bernel, if they find out I'm here what will they do?"

"They might come across and try and take you, unless they cool down; and that won't be so long as that Julie and Peter talk as they do. She makes him do everything she tells him. He's a sheep."

"And if they come across, what do you and Nance expect me to do?"

"You've got my gun," said the boy simply.

"Yes, I've got your gun. But do you expect me to kill some of them?"

"They'd kill you," said Bernel, conclusively. On second thoughts, however, he added, "But you needn't kill them. Wing one or two, and the rest will let you be. With a gun I could keep all Sark from landing on L'Etat."

"Suppose they come in the night? How many landing-places are there?"

"There's another at the end nighest Guernsey, but it's not easy. And it's only low tide and half-ebb that lets you ash.o.r.e here at all."

"How about your boat?"

"She's riding to a line. Tide's running up that way, but I'd better be off."

They stumbled through the darkness and the sleeping gulls, which woke in fright, and volubly accused one another of nightmares and riotous behaviour--and Bernel hauled in his boat, and handed Gard the tin dipper and three good-sized bream.

"If you can't eat them all at once, split them open and dry them in the sun," he said. "They'll keep for a week that way."

"Tell Nance I think of her every hour of the day, and I pray G.o.d the truth may come out soon."

"I'll tell her. It'll come out. She says so," and he pulled out into the darkness and was gone.

And the Solitary went back to his shelter, secure in the knowledge that the tide was on the rise, and half-ebb would not be till well on into next day. And he thought of Nance, and of Bernel, and of all the whole matter again; white thoughts and black thoughts, but chiefly white because of Nance, and Nance was a fact, while the black thoughts were shadows confusing as the mist.

He could only devoutly hope and pray that a clean wind might come and put the shadows to flight and let the sun of truth shine through.

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW HE SAW STRANGE SIGHTS

Living thus face to face with Nature, and drawn through lack of other occupation into unusually intimate a.s.sociation with her, Gard found his lonely rock a centre of strange and novel experience.

Situated as he was, even small things forced themselves largely upon his observation and wrought themselves into his memory. He found it good to lose himself for a time in these visible and tangible actualities, rather than in useless efforts after an understanding of the mystery of which he was the victim and centre.