The Black Pearl Part 28

"Yes, I was with Jose the first time Gallito showed it to him. Then he, your father, took us over the other parts of the mine and brought us back to the same spot to see if we could discover the hiding place for ourselves. I a.s.sure you we could not. Neither Jose nor myself liked being baffled in that way, for it seemed to us that we went over every inch of the ground, and your father stood there laughing at us in that sarcastic way of his. Finally we gave up the search and Gallito marked it, so that it might be found in a hurry. It is above one's head and the wall is too smooth to climb in order to reach it--"

"How can Jose get in then?" interrupted Pearl.

"Jose has a key to your father's locker, and in that locker he keeps a rope ladder. Jose throws up the ladder and the hooks catch on a dark, narrow little ledge; climbing up to this, he finds a small opening; he wriggles into this and finds himself in a small chamber which your father always keeps well provisioned. From this chamber a narrow pa.s.sage leads up to the surface of the ground, thus providing two exits; but, of course, the one above ground cannot be used now, owing to the snow."

Pearl, who had been listening breathlessly to this description of Jose's hiding place, leaned back with a sigh of relief. "Then it looks as if Jose might be all right for the present. I do hope so for all our sakes."

She sat silent for a few moments, apparently turning over something in her mind. When she spoke again her manner showed a certain embarra.s.sment. "Do--do you know," she asked rather hesitatingly, "how they got the information?"

"No," he replied. "And that is what is puzzling all of us, but they have so far refused to tell us."

Almost she uttered a prayer of thankfulness. She very strongly suspected that the only way Hanson could have secured the information was through her mother's inveterate habit of eavesdropping, a weakness of hers which she had failed to hide from her daughter, and a feeling almost of grat.i.tude came over Pearl that so far Hanson had been decent enough to spare that poor babbler.

She took a last sip of coffee and rose from the table. "I must go down to the other cabin," she said, reluctance in her heart, if not in her voice.

"I will go with you"--Seagreave rose with alacrity to accompany her--"and get the fires builded. It should really have been done long ago. But what am I thinking of? Wait a moment." He clapped his hand to his pocket. "One never knows what avenues of cleverness and cunning a great temptation may open up." He laughed a little. "On that wild drive to the Mont d'Or I insisted on Jose removing your necklace and all your rings with which he had decked himself. I dare say it cost him immeasurable pangs, but he had no time to express them. As I was driving he pa.s.sed them over to Hugh, and when we reached here Hugh gave them to me. He explained that in attempting to give them to you he might be seen, and if he were it might lead to some embarra.s.sing questions."

He drew from his pocket first the emeralds and then the rings, laying them carefully upon the table, where they formed a glittering heap.

"I don't think it is possible that Jose withheld anything," Seagreave continued. "He would not dare, and I am quite sure that neither Hughie nor I dropped even a ring when he gave them to me. Still I would be very much obliged if you will look them over and see if they are intact."

At the sight of her treasures Pearl uttered an exclamation of pleasure and fingered them lovingly, laying the emeralds against her cheek with a gesture that was almost a caress. "Thank you. Oh, it was good of you to think of them at such a time and rescue them for me." Her soft, sliding voice was warm with grat.i.tude. "They are all here." She slipped the rings on her fingers, her eyes dreaming on them. She fastened the emeralds about her neck and hid them beneath her gown, pressing them against her flesh as if she found pleasure in their cold contact.

She lifted her eyes to him; her smile was languourously ardent; impulsively she caught his hand and held it for a moment against her cheek. He started and she felt him tremble. Then hastily he withdrew his hand, murmuring at the same time a confused, almost inarticulate protest; but Pearl did not wait to hear it. She had risen abruptly and, catching up her cloak and wrapping it hastily about her, had opened the door before he could reach it and had stepped out into the snow.

Seagreave, who had paused a moment to close the door behind them, heard her utter a sharp exclamation and turned quickly.

"Dios!" she cried. "Dios! What is it?"

She had fallen back against the wall of the cabin and was gazing about her with a strange and startled expression. Seagreave's eye reflected it as he too stared about him with a look not yet of alarm but of wild, deep wonder. For the moment, at least, all things were the same. Above them the peaks towered whitely in the sullen, gray sky. On a level with their eyes, the illimitable forests of bare, black trees mingling with the denser and more compact shapes of the evergreens, stretched away over the hillsides, casting their long blue shadows on the snow-covered ground until they wore blurred indistinguishably in the violet haze of distance. Unchanged, and yet so strong was the presage of some unimagined and disastrous event, that when a long shiver ran through the earth Pearl screamed aloud, and, stumbling toward Seagreave, reached out gropingly for his hand.

For the second that they waited the earth, too, seemed to wait, a solemn, awe-filled moment of incalculable change, a tense moment, as if the unknown, mysterious forces of nature were gathering themselves together for some mighty, unprecedented effort.

Then shiver after shiver shook the ground, the earth trembled as if in some deep convulsion, the white peaks seemed bowing and bending--then a roar as of many waters, the air darkened and earth and sky seemed filled with the ma.s.s of the mountains slipping down--down to chaos.

Pearl had ceased to scream and had fallen to her knees, clinging desperately to Seagreave. Her face was blanched white with terror, and she was muttering incoherent prayers.

As for Harry, he had forgotten her, forgotten himself, and was living through moments or centuries, he knew not, which, of wonder and horror.

And what a sight! It was not simply a great mountain of snow slipping thunderously down to the valleys beneath; but in its ever gathering momentum and incredible velocity it tore great rocks from the ground and either snapped off trees as if they had been straws, or wholly uprooted them, and now was a fast-flying ma.s.s of snow, earth, trees and rocks whirling and hurtling through the air.

A huge rock had, as if forcibly detaching itself, flown off from the avalanche and buried itself in the ground only a few feet beyond Harry and Pearl, and more than one uprooted tree lay near them. Death had missed them by only a few paces.

Not realizing her immunity even after the air had begun to clear, and still panic-stricken and fearful of what might still occur, Pearl continued to moan and pray until Seagreave, who had been so dazed that he had been almost in a state of trance, again became aware of her presence and, partially realizing her piteous state of terror, lifted her in his arms and, wrapping them about her, endeavored to soothe her and allay her fears, although he had not yet sufficiently recovered himself to know fully what he was doing, and was merely following the instinct of protection.

It was impossible for him to realize the mundane again immediately after these undreamed of and supernormal experiences. Holding Pearl, who still clung to him frantically, cowering and trembling against him, he leaned upon the rough, projecting walls of his cabin and gazed with awed and still unbelieving eyes into this new and formless world, yet obscured with flying snow.

Gradually as the air cleared he saw that a new world, indeed, lay before them. "Look, look, Pearl," he cried, hoping to rouse her from her state of blind fright. "It has been an avalanche and it is over now."

"No, no," she moaned, and buried her head more deeply in his shoulder.

"I dare not look up. It will come again."

"No, it doesn't happen twice. It is over now and we are safe and the cabin is safe."

And yet, in spite of himself, he sympathized with her fear more than he would have admitted either to himself or her. Anything seemed possible to him now. He had looked upon a miracle. He had seen those immutable peaks, as stable as Time, bend and bow in their strange, cosmic dance, for the change in the position of one had created the illusory effect of a change in all.

"Come, look up, Pearl," he urged. "It is all over and everything is changed. Look up and get accustomed to it."

Everything was indeed changed. For a few yards before the cabin his path with its white, smooth walls was intact, but beyond that lay an incredibly smooth expanse of bare earth. The road was obliterated; the vast projecting rock ledges which had overshadowed it had disappeared.

They had all been razed or else uprooted like the rocks and trees and carried on in that irresistible rush. The light poured baldly down upon a hillside bare and blank and utterly featureless. But far down the road where the bridge had spanned the canon there rose a vast white mountain, effectually cutting them off from all communication with the village below.

Nothing remained of familiar surroundings. This was, indeed, a new world. At last Seagreave roused himself from his stunned contemplation of it and bent himself to the task of coaxing Pearl to lift her head and gaze upon it, too.

At last she did so, but at the sight of that bare and unfamiliar hillside her terrors again overcame her. "Come," she cried, dragging at his arm, "we must go--go--get away from here. Dios! Are you mad? It is the end of the world. Come quickly."

"Where?" asked Seagreave gently.

"Home," she cried wildly. "To the church. We can at least die blessedly."

Seagreave shook his head, his eyes on that white wall--that snow mountain which rose from the edge of the creva.s.se and seemed almost to touch the sky. "Listen, Pearl," he spoke more earnestly now, as if to force some appreciation of the situation upon her mind. "This cabin is the only thing upon the mountain. The avalanche has carried everything else away."

"Not my father's cabin, too," she peered down the hill curiously, yet fearfully, in a fascinated horror. "Oh, but it is true. It is gone. Oh, what shall we do? But we must get down to the camp. Come, come."

But for once Seagreave seemed scarcely to hear her. He had leaned out from the sheltering wall and was scanning with a measuring and speculative eye the white heap that rose from the edge of the canon and seemed almost to touch the lowering and sullen sky.

"Thank G.o.d, the camp is safe," he murmured. "The canon must have saved it, or else it would have been wiped off the earth just as Gallito's cabin has been. But it has swept the bridge away, of course."

"Oh, come." Pearl dragged at his sleeve. "I can't stay here. I am afraid."

"Pearl," and there were both anxiety and tenderness in his voice. "You must understand. Try to realize that there is no way to get down."

"But there must be some way," she insisted, "with snow-shoes--"

He shook his head gently but definitely. "There is no way. We might as well face it." He cast another long look at the sky. "It is the season for the thaws, the big thaws, but, even so, it will take time to melt down that mountain out there. No, it is useless to argue," as Pearl began again her futile rebellion against the inexorable forces of nature, "but what am I thinking of?" in quick self-reproach. "You must not stay out here in the cold any longer. Come." He threw open the cabin door.

But if Pearl heard him she gave no sign, but still leaned weakly, almost inertly, against the walls of the cabin, gazing down the hillside with dazed and still frightened eyes.

Seeing her condition, Seagreave wasted no more words, but lifted her in his arms and carried her into the room they had so recently left. There he placed her in a chair and pushed it near the fire and she sat shivering and cowering, her hands outstretched to the blaze.

The light from the fire streamed through the room and Pearl, cheered and restored more by that homely and familiar radiance than by any words of comfort he might have uttered, gradually sank further and further back in her chair and presently closed her eyes. It seemed to him that she slept. At first her rest was fitful, broken by exclamations and starts, but each time that she opened her eyes she saw the familiar and unchanged surroundings, and Seagreave sitting near her; and, rea.s.sured, her sleep became more natural and restful.

When she awoke it was to find herself alone. Seagreave had left, but she could hear him moving about in the next room, near at hand if she needed him. He was evidently bringing in some logs for the fire.

"As if nothing had happened," she muttered, "and things will go on just the same. We shall eat; we shall sleep. How can it be?"

She got up and began to walk up and down the room. She was young, she was strong, and the shock of those few moments of wonder and horror had almost worn off. Her active brain was alert and normal again, and she thought deeply as she walked to and fro, considering all possible phases of her present situation.

Then, ceasing to pace back and forth, she leaned against the window and looked out. The strange, new world lay before her, an earth bereft of its familiar forests, and which must send forth from its teeming heart a new growth of tender, springtime shoots to cover its nakedness. And as she gazed the sun burst through the gray clouds and poured down upon the wide, bare hillside an unbroken flood of golden splendor.