A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 33

At times he convinced himself that the brief gleams moved; but when, to ease his eyes of the intolerable strain, he looked up at the stars, it seemed to him that they moved also, and so he could not be sure.

But surely there was a gleam that seemed to move and come fitfully towards him--or was it only star-shine dancing on the waves of the Race which always ran against the tide?

He stood to watch, then lost the gleam, and crouched again disappointed.

The boat must come round Quette d'Amont, the great pile of rock that lay off the eastern corner, and the first glimpse he could hope to get of it in the darkness would be there.

Then, suddenly, in that curious way in which one sometimes sees more out of the tail of one's eye than out of the front of it, he got an impression--and with it a start--of something moving noiselessly among the tumbled rocks below on his left.

It was a dark night, but the glory of the stars lifted it out of the ebony-ruler category. It was a wide, thin, lofty darkness, but still black enough along the sides of his rock, and down there it seemed to him that something moved, something dim and shadowy and silent.

He thought of the dead man in his chamber down below. Could he be in the habit of walking of a night? He thought of ghosts, of which, if popular belief was anything to go by, Sark was full; and there was nothing to hinder them coming across to L'Etat for their Sabbat. And he thought of monster devil-fish climbing, loathsome and soundless, about the dark rocks.

He longed for a pair of Sark eyes, and shrank down into a hollow under the ridge to watch this thing, with something of a creepy chill between his shoulder-blades.

There was certainly something lighter than the surrounding darkness down below, and it moved. It turned the corner and flitted along the slope, slowly but surely, in the direction of his shelter. Its mode of progression, from the little he could make out in the darkness, was just such as he would have looked for in a huge octopus hauling itself along by its tentacles over the out-cropping rock-bones.

He could not rest there. He must see. He crawled along the ridge as quietly as he could manage it, and would have felt happier, whatever it was, spirit or monster, if he had had his gun. Now and again it stopped, and when it stopped he lay flat to the ground and held his breath, lest it should discover him. When it went on, he went on.

When he came to the end of the ridge he saw that the nebulous something had apparently stopped just where his house must be.

And then, every sense on the strain, he heard his own name called softly, and he laughed to himself for very joy of it, and lay still to hear it again, and laughed once more to think that in her simplicity she still thought of him as "Mr. Gard." He would teach her to call him "Steen," as his mother used to do.

Then he got up quickly and cried, as softly as herself, but with joy and laughter in his voice--

"Why, Nance! My dear, I was not sure whether you were a ghost or a devil-fish;" and he sprang down towards her.

And then, to his amazement, he saw that she was clad only in the clinging white garment in which he had seen her swim.

Her next words confounded him.

"Is Bernel here?"

"Bernel, Nance? No, dear, he is not here. Why--"

"Did he not get here last night?" she jerked sharply.

"No. No one. I was hoping--"

But she had sunk down against the great stones of the shelter, with her hands before her face.

"Mon Gyu, mon Gyu! Then he is dead! Oh, my poor one! My dear one!"

"Nance! Nance! What is it all, dearest? Did Bernel try to come across last night--"

"Yes, yes! He would come. He said you must be starving. We were all anxious about you--"

"And he tried to swim across?"

"Yes, yes! And he is drowned! Oh, my poor, poor boy!"

She was shaking with the sudden chill of dreadful loss. He stooped, and felt inside the shelter with a long arm for the old woollen cloak and wrapped her carefully in it. He raked out the blanket and made her sit with it tucked about her feet. And she was pa.s.sive in his hands, with thought as yet for nothing but her loss.

She was shaken with broken sobs, and in the face of grief such as this he could find no words. What could he say? All the words in the world could not bring back the dead.

And it was through him this great sorrow had come upon her. He seemed fated to bring misfortune on their house.

He wondered if she would hate him for it, though she must know he had had no more to do with the matter than with Tom's death.

He put a protecting arm round the old cloak, tentatively, and in some fear lest she might resent it, but knew no other way to convey to her what was in his heart.

But she did not resent it, and nothing was further from her mind than imputing any share in this loss to him.

Some women's hearts are so wonderfully const.i.tuted that the greater the demands upon them the more they are prepared to give. At times they give and give beyond the bounds of reason, and yet amazingly retain their faith and hope in the recipients of their gifts.

But that has nothing to do with our story. Except this--that these various demands on Nance's fort.i.tude, incurred by her love for Stephen Gard, far from weakening her love only made it the stronger. As that love came more and more between her and her old surroundings, and exacted from her sacrifice after sacrifice, the more she clung to it, and looked to it, and let the past go. The partial ostracism brought upon her by Gard's outspoken declaration of their mutual feeling--even this final offering of her dearly-loved brother--these only bound her heart to him the tighter.

"Nance dear!" he said at last, when she had got control of herself again. "Is it not possible to hope? He was so good a swimmer. Maybe he found the Race too strong and was carried away by it. He may have been picked up, and will come back as soon as he is able."

"No," she said, with gloomy decision. "He is dead. I feared for him, for I had been to look at the Race just before sundown, and it looked terribly strong. But he would go--"

"Why didn't he get a boat?"

"Ah, mon Gyu!" and she started up wildly. "I was forgetting. I was thinking only of myself and Bernel. There isn't a boat left alive outside the Creux, and he couldn't get one there without them knowing.

But"--in quick excitement now, to make up for lost time--"they have seen you here, and they may come to-night--Achochre that I am! They may be here! Come quickly! Your gun!" and she was all on the quiver to be gone.

Gard stooped and pulled out the gun from its hiding-place inside the shelter.

"Is it loaded?" she asked sharply.

"Yes. I cleaned it to-day."

"Take your charges with you, and do you hasten back to the place we landed the first night. You know?"

"I know. And you?"

"I will go to the other landing-place. But they are not likely to come there."

"And if they do?"

"I will manage them," and she slipped into the darkness with the big cloak about her.

Gard crept along the slope, and found a roost above the landing-place.

His brain was in a whirl. Bernel had tried to cross to him and was drowned. Nance had swum across. Brave girl! Wonderful girl! For him!--and for news of Bernel. It was terrible to think of Bernel, dead on his account--terrible! It would not be surprising if Nance hated him.

Yet, what had he done?--what could he do? He had done nothing. He could do nothing; and his teeth ground savagely at the craziness of these wild Sark men who had brought it all about, and at his own utter impotence.

But Nance did not hate him. And she had swum that dreadful Race to warn him. Brave girl! Wonderful girl!