A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 32

The next was as bad, and his hopes sank to nothing.

The third, however, was all right. He mixed it with some cognac and whipped it up with a stick, and the growlers inside fought over it contentedly.

He was almost afraid to try another. However, he could get more to-morrow. So he broke the fourth, and found it also good, so whipped it up with more cognac, and felt happier than he had done since he nibbled his rabbit-bones.

As he lay that night, and the gale howled about him more furiously than ever, his thoughts ran constantly on the dead man lying in the silent darkness down below.

It was very quiet down there, and dry; but this roaring turmoil, with its thunderous crashings and hurtling spray, was infinitely more to his taste, wet though he was to the bone, and almost deafened with the ceaseless uproar. For this, terrible though it was in its majestic fury, was life, and that black stillness below was death.

To the tune of the tumult without, he worked out the dead man's story in his mind.

It was long ago in the old smuggling days. Some bold free-trader of Sark or Guernsey had lighted on that cave and used it as a storehouse. Some too energetic revenue officer had disappeared one day and never been heard of again. He had been surprised--by the free-traders--perhaps in the very act of surprising them--brought over to L'Etat in a boat, been dragged through the tunnel, or made to crawl through, perhaps, with vicious knife-digs in the rear, and had been left bound in the darkness till he should be otherwise disposed of. His captors had been captured in turn, or maybe killed, and he had lain there alone and in the dark, waiting, waiting for them to return, shouting now and again into the m.u.f.fling darkness, struggling with his bonds, growing weaker and weaker, faint with hunger, mad with thirst, until at last he died.

It was horrible to think of, and desperate as his own state was, he thanked G.o.d heartily that he was not as that other.

Morning brought no slackening of the gale. It seemed to him, if anything, to be waxing still more furious.

He had only two eggs left, and they might both be bad ones, but he would not have ventured round the headland that day for all the eggs in existence.

He broke one presently, in answer to a clamour inside him that would brook no denial, and found it good, and lived on it that day, and mused between times on the strange fact that a man could feel so mightily grateful for the difference between a bad egg and a good one.

His sixth egg turned out a good one also, and the next day there came another hopeful lull, which permitted him to harry the puffins once more, and gave him a dozen chances against contingencies.

On the eighth day the storm blew itself out, and he looked hopefully across at the lonely and weather-beaten cliffs of Sark for the relief which he was certain they had been aching to send him.

The waves, however, still ran high, and, though he did not know it till later, there was not a boat left afloat round the whole Island. The forethoughtful and weather-wise had run them round to the Creux and carried them through the tunnel into the roadway behind. All the rest had been smashed and sunk and swallowed by the storm.

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW HE HELD THE ROCK

The sun blazed hot next day, and he spread himself out in it to warm, and all his soaked things in it to dry, and blessed it for its wholesome vigour.

Nance or Bernel would be sure to come as soon as the tide served at night, and he would net be sorry for a change of diet; meanwhile, he could get along all right with the unwilling a.s.sistance of the puffins.

The birds had all crept out of their hiding-places, and were wheeling and diving and making up for lost time and busily discussing late events at the tops of their voices whenever their bills were not otherwise occupied. Where they had all hidden themselves during the storm, he could not imagine, but there seemed to be as many of them as ever, and they were all quite happy and quarrelsome, except the cormorants, who were so ravenous that they could not spare a moment from their diving and gobbling, even to quarrel with their neighbours.

He levied on the puffins again, and, after a meal, prowled curiously about his rock to see what damage the storm had done, but to his surprise found almost none.

It seemed incredible that all should be the same after the deadly onslaught of the gale. But it was only in the valley of rocks that he found any consequences.

There the huge boulders had been hurled about like marbles: some had been tossed overboard, and some, in their fantastic up-piling, spoke eloquently of all they had suffered.

But one grim--though to him wholly gracious--deed the storm had wrought there. For, out of the pool where the devil-fish dwelt, its monstrous limbs streamed up and lay over the sloping rocks, and he dared not venture near. But, in the afternoon when he came again to look at it, and found it still in the same att.i.tude, something about it struck him as odd and unusual.

The great tentacles had never moved, so far as he could see, and there was surely something wrong with a devil-fish that did not move.

He hurled a stone, picked out of the landslip at the corner, and hit a tentacle full and fair with a dull thud like leather. But the beast never moved.

He was suspicious of the wily one, however. The devil, he knew, was sometimes busiest when he made least show of business. And it was not till next morning, when he found the monster still as before, that he ventured down to the pool and looked into it, and saw what had happened.

The waves had hurled a huge boulder into it--and there you may see it to this day--and it had fallen on the devil-fish and ground him flat, and purged the rock of a horror.

Gard examined the hideous tentacles with the curiosity of intensest repulsion; yet could not but stand amazed at the wonderful delicacy and finish displayed in the tiny powerful suckers with which each limb was furnished on the under side, and the flexible muscularity of the monstrous limbs themselves, thick as his biceps where they came out of the pool, and tapering to a worm-like point, capable, it seemed to him, of picking up a pin.

He was mightily glad the beast was dead, however. It had been a blot on Nature's handiwork, and the very thought of it a horror.

The strenuous interlude of the storm, which, to the lonely one exposed to its fullest fury, had seemed interminable--every shivering day the length of many, and the black howling nights longer still--had had the effect of relaxing somewhat his own oversight over himself and his precautions against being seen.

L'Etat in a furious sou'-wester is a sight worth seeing. Possibly some telescope had been brought to bear on the foam-swept rock when he, secure in the general boulevers.e.m.e.nt and cramped with hunger, had turned the forbidden corner with no thought in his mind but eggs.

Possibly again, it was sheer carelessness on his part, born once more of the security of the storm and the recent non-necessity for concealment.

However it came about, what happened was that, as he stood in the valley of rocks examining his dead monster, he became suddenly aware that a fishing-boat had crept round the open end of the valley, and that it seemed to him much closer in than he had ever seen one before.

He dropped p.r.o.ne among the boulders at once, but whether he had been seen he could not tell--could only vituperate his own carelessness, and hope that nothing worse might come of it.

He lay there a very long time, and when at last he ventured to crawl to the rocks at the seaward opening, the boat was away on the usual fishing-grounds busy with its own concerns, and he persuaded himself that its somewhat unusual course had been accidental. The incident, however, braced him to his former caution, and he went no more abroad without first carefully inspecting the surrounding waters from the ridge.

They would be certain to come that night, he felt sure, either Nance or Bernel, perhaps both. Yes, he thought most likely they would both come.

They would, without doubt, be wondering how he had fared during the storm, and would be making provision for him.

Perhaps Nance was cooking for him at that very moment, and thinking of him as he was of her.

In the certain expectation of their coming, he decided he would not go to sleep at all that night, but would crawl down to the landing-place to welcome them.

He wondered if that mad woman Julie had given up watching them, and, if not, if they would be able to circ.u.mvent her again. In any case, he hoped that if only one of them came it might be Nance. He fairly ached for the sight and sound of her--and the feel of her little hand, and a warm frank kiss from the lips that knew no guile.

The sufferings of the storm became as nothing to him in this large hope and expectation of her coming.

The intervening hours dragged slowly. It would be half-ebb soon after dark, he thought; and he crept up to the ridge and gazed anxiously over at the Race between him and Breniere, to see if it showed any unusual symptoms after the storm.

It ran furiously enough, but, he said to himself, it would slacken on the ebb, and they were so familiar with it that it would take more than that to stop them coming.

Before dark the great seas were rolling past, a little quicker than usual, he thought, but in long, smooth undulations, which slipped, unbroken and soundless, even along the black ledges of his rock. And when the stars came out--brighter than ever with the burnishing of the gale--the long black backs of the waves, and the darker hollows between, were sown so thick with trailing gleams that he could not be certain whether it was only star-shine or phosph.o.r.escence.

It was all very peaceful and beautiful, however, and very welcome to eyes that had not looked upon sun, moon, or star for eight whole nights and days, and whose ears had grown hardened to the ceaseless clamour of the gale. Nature, indeed, seemed preternaturally quiet, as though exhausted with her previous violence or desirous of wiping out the remembrance of it; just as small humanity after an outbreak endeavours at times to purge the memory of its offence by display of unusual amiability and sweetness.

Eager to welcome his confidently expected visitors, Gard crept along the ridge as soon as it was dark, and posted himself on the point which, in the daylight, commanded the pa.s.sage from Breniere.

And he sat there so long--so long after his hopes and wishes had flown over to Sark and hurried Bernel and Nance into a boat and landed them on L'Etat--that the night seemed running out, and he began to fear they were not coming, after all.

In the troubled darkness of the Race, he caught gleams at times which might be oar-blades or might be only the upfling from the perils below.

The tide was ebbing, and soon the black fangs with which it was strewn would be showing.