The Beach of Dreams Part 26

Raft, with the bundle beside him and the harpoon held between his knees, swung his head from the great beach on his right to the broken country on his left.

He said nothing, not wishing perhaps to dishearten his companion. It was she who spoke.

"That's the plain I told you of," said she, "we mustn't cross it, you can see from here some of the dangerous patches, those yellow ones, but there are others just as bad that you can't tell till you are trapped in them. I would have gone down, only a bird flying overhead dropped a fish on the ground right in front of me and the fish disappeared."

"We'd better get along the sea-sh.o.r.e rocks, seems to me," said Raft, "the tide's going out, all them rocks between tide marks is pretty flat."

"Suppose the tide comes in," said she, "and we can't get up the cliffs?"

"Oh, we'll have lots of time to make a good way before it comes back,"

replied he, "and we've got to trust a bit to chance, we've got to strike bold. I reckon we'd better trust to instinc'." He laughed in his beard.

"The same sort of instinc' that made that bird drop the fish to give you soundin's of that mud hole."

"Providence," said she, "yes--you are right."

"I believe in strikin' bold," said he, almost as though he were talking to himself. "It's like fighting with a chap, the fellow that does the hittin' without bothering about bein' hit. He's the chap. Well, if you're restored, we'll be gettin' along."

He heaved up and led the way, striking right down to the sea and pausing now and then to help her. Once he lifted her as though she were a feather from one rock to the other. Then, all of a sudden they came to a ten foot drop. There was no getting round that drop, it was a basalt step that circled the whole Lizard Point on its seaward side. It did not disconcert Raft. He threw the harpoon down, then he lowered himself, clutching the edge and let himself fall. Following his directions she threw him the bundle. It would have felled an ordinary landsman, but he caught it, placed it beside him and then ordered her to jump, just as she stood, without lowering herself.

"Jump with your arms up," said he, laughing, "no call to lower yourself.

I'll catch you."

It was like an order to commit suicide. It seemed to her impossible, she thought that he only spoke in fun, then she knew that he was in earnest, that he was ordering her. But it was impossible--absolutely. Then she jumped with arms raised, jumped into two great hands that clipped her round the waist and brought her, feet to ground, with scarcely a jar.

"I didn't think you'd have done it," said he. "You ain't wanting in pluck."

"I knew it would be all right if you told me," said she, "but I didn't want to do it until the very last moment."

After that she would have jumped over a cliff if he had told her. It seemed to her that he was invincible--infallible.

A climb of a couple of minutes brought them down to the tide mark rocks, the tide was a quarter out and the sea comparatively calm and the rocks flat-topped like those of the seal beach and free from seaweed except where, here and there, were piled ma.s.ses of giant kelp torn up from its deep sea attachments and cast here by the waves. It lay in ridges that had to be climbed over sometimes and seemed entirely confined to the Lizard Point and the rocks beyond, for when they reached where the cliffs began it ceased to occur.

Where the cliffs began they first experienced the true meaning of a journey along that coast.

She had seen these cliffs from the boat, but that view, though forbidding enough, had told her little of the reality.

They rose from two to four hundred feet in height, these cliffs, and looking up was like looking up a wall of polished ebony.

Here and there they were streaked with long lines of white where the guillemots in their thousands sat on ledges, and here and there they were faced by seaward rocks standing out in the water and carved by the waves into all sorts of fantastic shapes, but waves and rocks and sea and sky, all these were nothing, here the cliffs were everything, dominating the mind and soul, sinister, and tinging every sound from the wave echoes to the gull voices with tragedy.

And high tide mark was the cliff base in fine weather, in foul, the waves would lash and dash and beat fifty feet up, there was not a guillemot ledge lower than eighty feet, puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes, who always build above the guillemots did not seem to come here at all, keeping to the seaward rocks and the coast line where the cliffs drew further away from the sea.

With the sea so close on the right and the cliffs on the left the girl felt like a mouse in a trap designed for an elephant. Alone she would never have dared this road, even with Raft leading her she felt timid and oppressed. The place did not seem to affect Raft. Plodding ahead as indifferently as though he were on some civilized country road, he talked to her now and then over his shoulder, calling attention to queer shaped crabs or dead kelp fish, and ever as they went their road grew broader as the tide drew out.

It was now about an hour and a half after high water, that is to say, quarter ebb; in a little more than ten hours it would be high water again, before that they must find a way from the beach or be drowned.

Raft knew this and the girl knew it too. It seemed almost impossible that, with so much time before them, they could not find a break in the cliffs towards safe ground, yet the cliffs seemed to stretch endlessly before them and their pace was slow, not more than three miles an hour.

They rested sometimes for a moment watching the out-going sea and the gulls; unused to exercise the girl was tired, and the man knew it. Alone he could have travelled swiftly and without resting, but he said nothing, and though he knew the necessity of speed, it was he who made the halts for the sake of his companion. Three hours after noon he took some food out of the bundle and made her eat. They had already drunk from a little torrent rushing out of a crack in the cliff wall, but even so the food seemed dry and she could scarcely swallow it. Anxiety had her in its grip, the cliffs stretching on and on interminably seemed like misfortune itself made visible.

Said Raft: "The tide's near the turn and them cliffs don't shew no sign of a cut in them, but then there's only two miles or so to be seen from here. Round that bend there's no knowing, they may break away beyond there. What I'm thinkin' is this. We've time to get back along the road we've come by before it's high water again."

"Go back?"

"We've time to do it; if we keep on our course it will take us maybe near an hour to get to that shoulder and from there we won't have much time to get back before high water again. We've cut it too fine and if the tide comes back and catches us before we get to a break we're done."

She looked forward then she looked back. They were in a veritable corridor. The sea formed the right hand wall of this corridor, the cliffs varying from two hundred to three hundred feet high formed the left hand wall, cliffs black as ebony, polished by sea washing, unclimbable and tremendous as a dream of Dante.

She saw their full position. There was time to get back from where they stood, but if they went on to the cape of cliff before them there would be no time to get back, they would have to go on, and the unseen cliffs beyond that cape might stretch for twenty miles unclimbable as here.

Yet the idea of going back was horrible, heartbreaking.

She saw that Raft was between two moods. Then she said to him.

"If you were alone would you go back or go on?"

"Me?" said Raft. He paused for a moment as if in thought--"Oh, I reckon I'd go on."

"Then we will go on."

"I was thinkin' of you," said he.

"I know--but I could not bear to go back. If we fail now like that we will fail altogether. Imagine going all that way back. No, I couldn't.

We must risk it."

"I'm thinking that way," said he.

He picked up the bundle and harpoon and they started, and no sooner had she taken the first step than Fear laid his hand on her heart and a wild craving to return seized her so that she could have cried out.

She had once said that she feared an ugly face more than a blow, and the fear that seized her now was less the fear of death than the fear of the cliffs and their conspiracy with the murmuring sea that would soon be an inclosing wall.

She fought it down.

The cliff shoulder was further away than they thought; it took them an hour to reach it and, when they turned it, there, before them lay cliffs higher, more monstrous and running in a curve to another shoulder seven miles away, if a yard. But towards the middle of the curve the cliff face seemed ridged and broken near the base. Raft shading his eyes, pointed out this broken surface.

"It looks as if there was foothold there beyond tide mark," said he, "we've got to go on anyhow--Lord, but you're tired!"

He made her sit down. The sight of that gargantuan sweep of cliff coming on top of the weariness of the journey had crushed her. To go forward seemed impossible, to fight against that immensity impossible. She could have wept but she had neither tears nor energy. The G.o.ds seemed to have built those bastions to shut out all hope and the voice of the returning sea seemed like a tide turning over her broken thoughts like pebbles.

Raft standing over her like a tower said not a word.

Mixed with the voice of the sea came the voices of the gulls and all sorts of sea echoes from the cliffs.

Then as she sat she made a supreme effort of mind. She must rise and go on. She struggled to rise, but her limbs had left her, deserted her, stricken as if by paralysis.

Raft took off his cap and put it in his pocket, then he went to the cliff side and rested the harpoon against it, standing up. She watched him, vaguely wondering what he was about, then he returned to her and bent down and she found herself lifted suddenly and seated on his left shoulder.

"Hold on to my hair," cried he. Then he bent and picked up the bundle, went to the cliff side and picked up the harpoon and started. The giant strength that had caught her when she jumped from the Lizard Point ledge was carrying her now like a feather, the crook of his left arm round her legs to steady her, the harpoon clutched in his left hand, the bundle swung over his right shoulder.

And she held on to his hair as a child might, without a word, and as she held the strength of him seemed to permeate her through her fingers casting fear and misery out.