The Outspan Part 17

"Don't you gas, old chap! How about that bathe you were so bent on?"

Merciful heavens! The words fell like a bucket of ice-water on me. I made a ghastly attempt at a laugh, but it was a failure--an utter failure--and of course brought all the others down on me at once.

"The n.i.g.g.e.r seems to have taken all the bathe out of you, old man," said one.

"Not at all!" I answered loftily. "It would take more than that to frighten me."

Now, why on earth didn't I hold my tongue and let the remark pa.s.s? I must needs make an a.s.s of myself by bravado, and now I was in for it.

There was a perfect chorus of, "Go it, old man!" "Now, isn't that _real_ pluck?" "Six to four on the n.i.g.g.e.r!"

"I pet fife pound you not swim agross and dife two times." This last came from the little French demon, and, being applauded by the company, I took up the bet. The fact is I was nettled by the chaff, and in the heat of the moment did what I regretted a minute later.

As I rose to get my towel I said with cutting sarcasm:

"I don't care about the bet, but I'll just show you that _everyone_ isn't afraid of his own shadow; though," I added forgetfully, "it's rather an unreasonable time to bathe."

Here Frenchy struck a stage att.i.tude, and said innocently:

"Ah! vat a night foor ze bade!"

The shout of laughter that greeted this sally was more than enough to decide me, and I went off in search of a towel.

Harding, I could see, did not like the idea, and tried to persuade me to give it up; but that was out of the question.

"Mind," said he, "I'm no believer in ghosts; yet," he added, with rather a forced laugh, "this is the anniversary, and you know it's uncanny."

I quite agreed with him, but dared not say so, and I pretended to laugh it off. I was ready in a few moments, and then a rather happy idea, as I thought, struck me, and I called out:

"Who's coming to see that I win my bet?"

"Oh, we know we can trust you, old chap!" said Jim with exaggerated politeness. "It'd be a pity, you know, to outnumber the ghost."

"Very well; it's all the same to me. Good-bye! Two dives and a swim across--is that it?"

"Yes, and look out for the n.i.g.g.e.r!"

"Mind you fish him up!"

"Watch his teeth, Jack!"

"Feel for his throat, you know!" This latter exclamation came from Jim; it was yelled out as I disappeared down the slope. Jim had not forgotten the incident of the grave, evidently.

I had a half-moon to go by, and a ghostly sort of light it shed.

Everything seemed more shadowy and fantastic than usual. Besides this, I had not gone a hundred yards from the waggons before every sound was stilled; not the faintest whisper stirred the air. The crunching of my heavy boots on the gravel was echoed across the creek, and every step grated on my nerves and went like a sword-stab through me.

However, I walked along briskly until the descent became more steep and I was obliged to go more carefully. Down I went, step by step, lower and lower, till I felt the light grow dimmer and dimmer, and then quite suddenly I stepped into gloom and darkness.

This startled me. The suddenness of the change made me shiver a bit and fancy it was cold; but it couldn't have been that, for a moment later the chill had gone and the air was close and sultry. It must have been something else. Still I went down, down, down, along the winding path, and the further I went the more intense seemed the stillness and the deeper the gloom.

Once I stood still to listen; there was not a stir or sound save the trickling of the water below. My heart began to beat rather fast, and my breath seemed heavy. What was it? Surely, I thought, it is not fright? I tried to whistle now as I strode along, but the death-like silence mocked me and choked the breath in my throat.

At last I reached the stream. The path ran along the side of the water among the rocks and ferns. I looked for the pool, but could not see a sign of it. Still I followed the path until it wound along a very narrow ledge of rock.

I was so engrossed picking my steps along there that, when I had got round and saw the pool lying black and silent at my feet, I fairly staggered back with the shock. There was no mistaking the place. The pool was surrounded by high rocks; on the opposite side they ran up quite perpendicularly to a good height. Nowhere, except the ledge at my feet, would a man have been able to get out of the water alone. The black surface of the water was as smooth as gla.s.s; not a ripple or bubble or straw broke its awful monotony.

It fascinated me; but it was a ghostly spot. I don't know how long I stood there watching it. It seemed hours. A sickening feeling had crept over me, and I _knew I was afraid_.

I looked all round, but there was nothing to break the horrid spell.

Behind me there was a face of rock twenty feet high with ferns and creepers falling from every crevice. But it looked black, too. I turned silently again towards the water, almost hoping to see something there; but there was still the same unbroken surface, the same oppressive deadly silence as before. What was the use of delaying? It had to be done; so I might as well face it at once. I own I was frightened. I would have lost the bet with pleasure, but to stand the laughter, chaff, and jeers of the others! No! that I could never do.

My mind was made up to it, so I threw off my clothes quickly and came up to the water's edge. I walked out on the one low ledge and looked down.

I was trembling then, I know.

I tried to think it was cold, but I _knew_ it was not that I stooped low down to search the very depths of the pool, but I could see nothing; all was uniformly dark. And yet--good G.o.d! what was that? Right down at the bottom lay a long black object. With starting eyes I looked again.

It was only a rock. I drew back a pace and sat down. The perspiration was in beads on my forehead. I shook in every limb; sick and faint, my breath went and came in the merest whispers. So I sat for a minute or two with my head resting on my hands, and then the thought struck me, "What if the others are watching me above?"

I jumped up to make a running plunge of it, but, somehow, the run slackened into a walk, and the walk ended in a pause near the ledge, and there I stood to have another look into the dark, still pool.

Suddenly there was a rustling behind me. I jumped round, tingling, quivering all over, and a pebble rolled at my feet from the rocks above.

I called out in a shaky voice, "Now then, you chaps! none of that; I can see you." But really I could see nothing, and the echo of my voice had such a weird, awful sound that I began to lose my head altogether.

There was no use now pretending that I was not frightened, for I was.

My nerves were completely unstrung, my head was splitting, and my legs could hardly bear me. I preferred to face any ridicule rather than endure this for another minute, and I commenced dressing. Then I pictured to myself Jim's grinning face, Frenchy's pantomime of the whole affair, Harding's quiet smile, and the chaff and laughter of them all, and I paused. A sudden rush, a plunge and souse, and I was in.

Breathless and gasping I struck out, only twenty yards across; madly I swam. The cold water made my flesh creep. On and on, faster and faster; would I never reach it? At last I touched the rocks and turned to come back. Then all their chaff recurred to me. Every stroke seemed to hiss the words at me, "Feel for his throat! Feel for his throat!" I fancied the dead n.i.g.g.e.r was on me, and every moment expected to feel his hand on my shoulder. On I sped, faster and faster, mad with the dread of being entangled by the legs and pulled down--I swam for life. When I scrambled on the ledge I felt I was _saved_! Then all at once I began to feel my body tingling with a most exhilarating sense of relief after an absurd fright, a sense of power restored, of self-respect and triumph and an insane desire to laugh. I did laugh, but the sepulchral echoes of my hilarious cackle rather chilled me, and I began to dress.

Then for the first time occurred to me the conditions of the bet: "Two dives and a swim across." Now, this would have been quite natural in ordinary pools--a plunge, a scramble on the opposite bank, another plunge, and back. But here, with the precipitous face of rock opposite, it meant _two_ swims across and _two dives_ from the same spot. But I did not mind; in fact, I was enjoying it now, and I thought with a glow of pride how I would rub it into Jim about fishing up his darned old n.i.g.g.e.r with the cut throat.

I walked to the edge smiling.

"Yes, my boy," I murmured, "I'll fish you up if you're there, or a fistful of gravel for Jim and Frenchy--little devil! It'll be change for his fiver;" and I chuckled at my joke.

I drew a long breath and dropped quietly into the water, head first; down, down, down--gently, softly. A couple of easy strokes and I glided along the bottom. Then something touched me. G.o.d in heaven! how it all burst on me at once! I felt four rigid fingers laid on my shoulder and drawn down my chest, the finger-nails scratching me. Instantly I made a grasp with both hands; my left fastened on the neck of a human body, and my right, just above, closed, and the _fingers met_ through the ragged flesh of a gashed throat.

I tried to scream--the water choked me. I let go and swam on, and then up. I shot out of the water waist high, gasping and glaring wildly, and then soused under again. As I again came up I dashed the water from my eyes. I saw the surface of the pool break, and a head rose slowly.

Kind Heaven! _there were two_! Slowly the two bodies rose across the black margin where the shadow ceased, full in the moonlit portion of the pool--cold, clear and horrible in their ghastly nakedness. And as they rose the murderous wounds appeared. The dank hair hung over their foreheads; the glazed and sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s were fixed with the vacant stare of death on _me_. One bore a terrible gash from temple to eye, and lower down the bluish red slit of an a.s.segai on the left breast.

On the other was one wound only; but how awful! The throat was cut from ear to ear; the bluish lips of the great gash hung wide apart where my hand had torn them. I could even see the severed windpipe. The head was thrown slightly back, but the eyes glared down at me with an awful stony glare, while through the parted lips the teeth gleamed and grinned cold and bright as they caught the light of the moon. One glance--half an instant--showed me all this, and then, as the figures rose waist high, I saw one arm rigid at right angles to the body from the elbow, and the stiff hand that had clawed me. For one instant they poised, balancing; then, bowing slowly over, they came down on the top of me.

Then indeed my brain seemed to go. I struggled under them. I fought and shrieked; but I suppose the bubbles came up in silence. The dead stiff hand was laid on my head and pressed me down--down, down! Then the hand of death slipped, and I was free. Once I kicked them as I struggled to the surface, and gasping, frantic, mad, made for the bank.

On, on, on! O G.o.d! would I never reach it? One more effort, a wrench, and I was out. Never a pause now. One bound, and I had pa.s.sed the ledge; then up and up, past the cliffs, over the rocks, cut and bleeding, on I dashed as fast as mortal man ever raced. Up, up the stony path, till, with torn feet and shaking in every limb, I reached the waggon. There was an exclamation, a pause, and then a perfect yell of laughter. The laugh saved me; the heartless cruelty of it did what nothing else could have done--it roused my temper; but for that, I believe I should have gone mad.

Harding alone came forward anxiously towards me.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "For G.o.d's sake, what is it?"

The laugh had sobered me, and I answered quietly that it was nothing much--just a thing I would like him to see down at the pool. There were a score of questions in anxious and half-apologetic tones, for they soon realised that some thing was wrong; but I answered nothing, and so they followed me in silence, and there, on the oily, unbroken surface of the silent pool, floated in grim relief the two bodies. We pulled them out and found the corpses lashed together. At the end of the rope was an empty loop, the stone out of which I must in my struggle have dislodged.

Close to the n.i.g.g.e.r we laid them, with another pile of stones to mark the spot; but who they were and where they came from none of us ever knew for certain.

The week before this two lucky diggers had pa.s.sed through Newcastle from the fields, going home. Four years have now pa.s.sed, letters have come, friends have inquired, but there is no news of them, and I think, poor chaps! they must have "gone home" by another route.