PERIL BY LAND.
The Trevennacks dined in their lodgings at Gunwalloe at half-past
seven. But in the rough open-air life of summer visitors on the Cornish
coast, meals as a rule are very movable feasts; and Michael Trevennack
wasn't particularly alarmed when he reached home that evening to find
Cleer hadn't returned before him. They had missed one another, somehow,
among the tangled paths that led down the gully; an easy enough thing
to do between those big boulders and bramble-bushes; and it was a
quarter to eight before Trevennack began to feel alarmed at Cleer's
prolonged absence. By that time, however, he grew thoroughly
frightened; and, reproaching himself bitterly for having let his
daughter stray out of his sight in the first place, he hurried back,
with his wife, at the top of his speed along the cliff path to the
Penmorgan headland.
It's half an hour's walk from Gunwalloe to Michael's Crag; and by the
time Trevennack reached the mouth of the gully the sands were almost
covered; so for the first time in fifteen years he was forced to take
the path right under the cliff to the now comparatively distant island,
round whose base a whole waste of angry sea surged sullenly. On the way
they met a few workmen who, in answer to their inquiries, could give
them no news, but who turned back to aid in the search for the missing
young lady. When they got opposite Michael's Crag, a wide belt of black
water, all encumbered with broken masses of sharp rock, some above and
some below the surface, now separated them by fifty yards or more from
the island. It was growing dark fast, for these were the closing days
of August twilight; and dense fog had drifted in, half obliterating
everything. They could barely descry the dim outline of the pyramidal
rock in its lower half; its upper part was wholly shrouded in thick
mist and drizzle.
With a wild cry of despair, Trevennack raised his voice, and shouted
aloud, "Cleer, Cleer! where are you?"
That clarion voice, as of his namesake angel, though raised against the
wind, could be heard above even the thud of the fierce breakers that
pounded the sand. On the highest peak above, where she sat, cold and
shivering, Cleer heard it, and jumped up. "Here! here! father!" she
cried out, with a terrible effort, descending at the same time down the
sheer face of the cliff as far as the dashing spray and fierce wild
waves would allow her.
No other ear caught the sound of that answering cry; but Trevennack's
keen senses, preternaturally awakened by the gravity of the crisis,
detected the faint ring of her girlish voice through the thunder of the
surf. "She's there!" he cried, frantically, waving his hands above his
head. "She's there! She's there! We must get across and save her."
For a second Mrs. Trevennack doubted whether he was really right, or
whether this was only one of poor Michael's hallucinations. But the
next moment, with another cry, Cleer waved her handkerchief in return,
and let it fall from her hand. It came, carried on the light breeze,
and dropped in the water before their very eyes, half way across the
channel.
Frenzied at the sight, Trevennack tore off his coat, and would have
plunged into the sea, then and there, to rescue her. But the workmen
held him back. "No, no, sir; you mustn't," they said. "No harm can't
come to the young lady if she stops there. She've only got to sit on
them rocks there till morning, and the tide'll leave her high and dry
right enough, as it always do. But nobody couldn't live in such a sea
as that--not Tim o' Truro. The waves 'u'd dash him up afore he knowed
where he was, and smash him all to pieces on the side o' the island."
Trevennack tried to break from them, but the men held him hard. Their
resistance angered him. He chafed under their restraint. How dare these
rough fellows lay hands like that on the Prince of the Archangels and a
superior officer in Her Majesty's Civil Service? But with the
self-restraint that was habitual to him, he managed to refrain, even
so, from disclosing his identity. He only struggled ineffectually,
instead of blasting them with his hot breath, or clutching his strong
arms round their bare throats and choking them. As he stood there and
hesitated, half undecided how to act, of a sudden a sharp cry arose
from behind. Trevennack turned and looked. Through the dark and the fog
he could just dimly descry two men hurrying up, with ropes and life
buoys. As they neared him, he started in unspeakable horror. For one of
them, indeed, was only Eustace Le Neve; but the other--the other was
that devil Walter Tyrrel, who, he felt sure in his own heart, had
killed their dear Michael. And it was his task in life to fight and
conquer devils.
For a minute he longed to leap upon him and trample him under foot, as
long ago he had trampled his old enemy, Satan. What was the fellow
doing here now? What business had he with Cleer? Was he always to be in
at the death of a Trevennack?
But true to her trust, the silver-haired lady clutched his arm with
tender watchfulness. "For Cleer's sake, dear Michael!" she whispered
low in his ear; "for Cleer's sake--say nothing; don't speak to him,
don't notice him!"
The distracted father drew back a step, out of reach of the spray. "But
Lucy," he cried low to her, "only think! only remember! If I cared to
go on the cliff and just spread my wings, I could fly across and save
her--so instantly, so easily!"
His wife held his hand hard. That touch always soothed him. "If you
did, Michael," she said gently, with her feminine tact, "they'd all
declare you were mad, and had no wings to fly with. And Cleer's in no
immediate danger just now, I feel sure. Don't try, there's a dear man.
That's right! Oh, thank you."
Reassured by her calm confidence, Trevennack fell back yet another step
on the sands, and watched the men aloof. Walter Tyrrel turned to him.
His heart was in his mouth. He spoke in short, sharp sentences. "The
coastguard's wife told us," he said. "We've come down to get her off.
I've sent word direct to the Lizard lifeboat. But I'm afraid it won't
come. They daren't venture out. Sea runs too high, and these rocks are
too dangerous."
As he spoke, he tore off his coat, tied a rope round his waist, flung
his boots on the sand, and girded himself rapidly with an inflated
life-buoy. Then, before the men could seize him or prevent the rash
attempt, he had dashed into the great waves that curled and thundered
on the beach, and was struggling hard with the sea in a life and death
contest. Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to aid him in his
endeavors. He had meant to plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was
beforehand with him. He was no match in a race against time for the
fiery and impetuous Cornish temperament. It wasn't long, however,
before the breakers proved themselves more than equal foes for Walter
Tyrrel. In another minute he was pounded and pummeled on the unseen
rocks under water by the great curling billows. They seized him
resistlessly on their crests, tumbled him over like a child, and dashed
him, bruised and bleeding, one limp bundle of flesh, against the jagged
and pointed summits of the submerged boulders.
With all his might, Eustace Le Neve held on to the rope; then, in coat
and boots as he stood, he plunged into the waves and lifted Walter
Tyrrel in his strong arms landward. He was a bigger built and more
powerful man than his host, and his huge limbs battled harder with the
gigantic waves. But even so, in that swirling flood, it was touch and
go with him. The breakers lifted him off his feet, tossed him to and
fro in their trough, flung him down again forcibly against the
sharp-edged rocks, and tried to float off his half unconscious burden.
But Le Neve persevered in spite of them, scrambling and tottering as he
went, over wet and slippery reefs, with Tyrrel still clasped in his
arms, and pressed tight to his breast, till he landed him safe at last
on the firm sand beside him.
The squire was far too beaten and bruised by the rocks to make a second
attempt against those resistless breakers. Indeed, Le Neve brought him
ashore more dead than alive, bleeding from a dozen wounds on the face
and hands, and with the breath almost failing in his battered body.
They laid him down on the beach, while the fishermen crowded round him,
admiring his pluck, though they deprecated his foolhardiness, for they
"knowed the squire couldn't never live ag'in it." But Le Neve, still
full of the reckless courage of youth, and health, and strength, and
manhood, keenly alive now to the peril of Cleer's lonely situation,
never heeded their forebodings. He dashed in once more, just as he
stood, clothes and all, in the wild and desperate attempt to stem that
fierce flood and swim across to the island.
In such a sea as then raged, indeed, and among such broken rocks,
swimming, in the strict sense, was utterly impossible. By some mere
miracle of dashing about, however--here, battered against the sharp
rocks; there, flung over them by the breakers; and yonder, again,
sucked down, like a straw in an eddy, by the fierce strength of the
undertow--Eustace found himself at last, half unconscious and half
choked, carried round by the swirling scour that set through the
channel to the south front of the island. Next instant he felt he was
cast against the dead wall of rock like an india rubber ball. He
rebounded into the trough. The sea caught him a second time, and flung
him once more, helpless, against the dripping precipice. With what life
was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge.
Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its
towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone.
He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves
dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, and left him there hanging.
Like a mountain goat, Eustace clambered up the side, on hands, knees,
feet, elbows, glad to escape with his life from that irresistible
turmoil. The treacherous herbs on the slope of the crag were kind to
him. He scrambled ahead, like some mad, wild thing. He went onward,
upward, cutting his hands at each stage, tearing the skin from his
fingers. It was impossible; but he did it. Next minute he found himself
high and dry on the island.
His clothes were clinging wet, of course, and his limbs bruised and
battered. But he was safe on the firm plateau of the rock at last; and
he had rescued Cleer Trevennack!
In the first joy and excitement of the moment he forgot altogether the
cramping conventionalities of our every-day life; and, repeating the
cry he had heard Michael Trevennack raise from the beach below, he
shouted aloud, at the top of his voice, "Cleer! Cleer! Where are you?"
"Here!" came an answering voice from the depths of the gloom overhead.
And following the direction whence the sound seemed to come, Eustace Le
Neve clambered up to her.
As he seized her hand and wrung it, Cleer crying the while with delight
and relief, it struck him all at once, for the very first time, he had
done no good by coming, save to give her companionship. It would be
hopeless to try carrying her through those intricate rock-channels and
that implacable surf, whence he himself had emerged, alone and
unburdened, only by a miracle. They two must stop alone there on the
rock till morning.
As for Cleer, too innocent and too much of a mere woman in her deadly
peril to think of anything but the delightful sense of confidence in a
strong man at her side to guard and protect her, she sat and held his
hand still, in a perfect transport of gratitude. "Oh, how good of you
to come!" she cried again and again, bending over it in her relief, and
half tempted to kiss it. "How good of you to come across like that to
save me."