RENT ASUNDER
Winefred and her father were on their way to the down, passing up from
Axmouth through Bindon, when Mrs. Jose appeared in the archway that
gives access to the court, and saluted them.
She was in a condition of considerable perturbation, as was perceptible
in her face, which mirrored the state of her mind.
Winefred, catching her hand, inquired breathlessly, 'What is the
meaning of this? It is as though every one were on the cliffs. Surely
not an invasion from France?'
'It is rabbits. They are running from the downs and the people are
going on to it.'
'What is the matter?'
'I cannot tell. No one knows. Something is going to happen, and your
mother has not returned.'
'My mother!'
'She went to the cottage with a carpet-bag to remove her knick-knacks,
and has not come back. But perhaps she has got together men to carry
the furniture and all the whole bag of tricks out of the house.'
'But why?'
'And all my men and maids have gone too. And Jose has toddled after
them, he as don't care for phenomena, as the parson calls it, but only
his pipe and ale.'
'But what is the matter?'
'The Lord only knows. The sea is boiling and throwing up mud, and they
think that the rocks are about to fall. But I can't say. Lord preserve
us all! It may be the Last Day coming on us in Axmouth and going on
next to Seaton, and destroy it by instalments. If so, I wish it had
begun t'other end of England.'
'Where is my mother――at the cottage?'
'That is just what I do not know, but want to find out.'
Winefred waited no longer. She ran up the lane leaving her father to
follow at a pace more suited to his age and tight-lacing.
She came to the gate――once set with thorns――with a number of people
running also up the lane, and could see that there were a great many
on the common, forming as it were a wavering black ribbon on the short
turf. Some impelled by curiosity advanced considerably, but next moment
alarmed at their own temerity, scared by some trifle, recoiled.
One cried out that he heard a grinding sound under his boot-soles,
and at once there was a rush inland. There broke out an argument
as to where the fall would be. Some said along the line of the old
Undercliff, there would be the cleavage. This was disputed on the
ground that the Undercliff represented an earlier and exhausted
subsidence.
One point there was on the down higher than the rest, that commanded a
general view, and this was a point to which the curious trended partly
because it gave such an extensive prospect, but also because it was
esteemed secure.
Winefred inquired of the groups she encountered whether they had seen
her mother, and received contradictory replies.
She was taking the path that led to the cottage, when she was arrested
by a loud and general cry that ran from west to east; and immediately
she heard a strange rending sound as of thick cloth ripped asunder;
this produced a rush backwards of the people, and shouts of command
rang from some of the preventive men. At once was seen a jagged fissure
running like a lightning-flash through the turf, followed by a gape,
an upheaval, a lurch, then a sinkage, and a starring and splitting
of the surface. In another moment a chasm yawned before their eyes,
three-quarters of a mile long, torn across the path, athwart hedges,
separating a vast tract of down and undercliff from the mainland, and
descending into the bowels of the earth.
Winefred was caught by the shoulder and hurled back.
It was not safe to stand near the lip of this hideous rent, for that
lip broke up and fell in masses into the abyss. Cracks started from it,
or behind it, and widened, and whole blocks of rock and tracts of turf
disappeared. The surface beyond the chasm presented the most appalling
appearance. It was in wild movement, breaking up like an ice-pack in a
thaw. It swayed, danced, fell apart into isolated blocks, some stood up
as pillars, some bent as horns, others balanced themselves, then leaned
forward, and finally toppled over and disappeared.
In an agony of alarm for her mother, Winefred ran to the bit of
isolated land whence the whole scene was visible, even the cottage, and
she was followed by Mrs. Jose and Mr. Holwood, who had come up with her.
From this spot of vantage could be discerned how that a wide tract of
land, many acres in length, had separated from the main body and was
sliding seaward in a tilted position. At the same moment from out the
sea rose a black ridge, like the back of a whale, but this drew out and
stretched itself parallel to the fissure.
An awed silence had fallen on the spectators as they held their breath
to watch the progress of the convulsion that was changing the outline
of the coast and transforming its appearance.
But suddenly a cry was heard, and next moment some one was seen running
on the sloping and still sliding mass.
It was not Jane Marley. It was a man carrying a carpet-bag.
For some time none could make out who he was; but the Captain of the
Excise, who had a glass, exclaimed that he was Dench, the ferryman.
Olver appeared to be panic-stricken to such an extent as to have almost
lost his senses. Seeing the crowd he ran towards it, along the path
from the cottage till he came upon the gap that was rapidly widening
and dividing him at every moment farther from the mainland. He seemed
as though on board a vessel that was being swept out to sea, and
frantically strove to escape from her to those who stood on the wharf
observing him. Down into the separating chasm eyes looked, but could
not make out the bottom; the depth contained a tossing mass of crumbled
chalk and erupted pebble, with occasional squirts of water, some two or
three hundred feet below the surface on the land side. It was like a
mighty polypus mouth that had opened and was chewing and digesting its
food in its throat and belly.
Seeing this, mad with fear, shrieking like a woman, Olver turned and
fled, to be again arrested by a mound that lifted before his eyes as
though thrown up by a monstrous burrowing mole. Almost immediately
this ridge changed its character, it split with a sharp snap, became
a rent, and Dench's way was again cut off. Once more he turned, and
this time ran in a seaward direction down the inclination, but when he
caught sight of the churning water throwing up volumes of mud, and at
the uprising slimy reef lifting itself out of the sea, he turned again,
never letting go his hold of the bag, shrieking still, for in the
unparalleled horror of the situation his brain had lost its balance.
Those who looked on at the frantic man knew that it was not within
human power to aid him. It was a mighty arena, and the spectators
contemplated the solitary flying wretch pursued to his death by the
relentless, invisible forces of Nature. Now he sought the cottage. It
seemed to him in his dazed condition that he might find shelter there.
But the door had been locked by himself and the key cast away.
He stood and wiped from his brow the sweat that rained down and
blinded him. And then a gleam of thought lighted his troubled mind. He
considered that if he ran eastward and could outstrip the rent as it
formed, he might yet attain solid and stationary land.
But those who looked on with bated breath and trembling pulses saw
that the attempt must end in failure. Such as stood on the height
in security roared out advice to him. He halted, looked in their
direction, endeavoured vainly to catch what was said. Men yelled
louder, waved their arms, but as none agreed in the advice tendered,
the wretch was confused and not assisted.
He continued his run eastward, ran――ran with his full strength, and
came abruptly on the edge of a mural precipice, with another world far
below his feet covered with brushwood, from which he was cut off by a
perpendicular escarpment like one of the walls of a crater in the moon.
To that lower world he could not descend. Then again he turned to run
in an opposite direction. To such as saw him he was like a fox throwing
the hounds off his scent, doubling, retrieving, dodging, but always
headed.
And now as he ran he was brought down by his foot suddenly sinking into
a crack that was in process of formation, and which he had not seen in
his precipitate haste. By the time he had extracted his leg, this crack
had become a gash that descended into darkness.
Clinging to a bush, kneeling, as he withdrew his foot, he saw the
crumbling chalk dribble into this depth below, and the thought quivered
through him that he was going down alive into the bottomless pit.
Rendered crazy with fear he mounted a fragment of rock and saw about
him the wreckage as of a world――prostrate trees, leaning pillars of
rock, disrupted masses of soil, bushes draggling over to drop into the
throats open to swallow them.
There was but one possibility of salvation open to him, to leap the
chasm that divided him from the mainland at one point where as yet the
width was not extreme, and the feat was not impossible.
But to do this he must act with promptitude. To fail was to fall down
that throat to be mumbled and chumped with the grinding rocks. The leap
would be considerable, but feasible by any man of moderate activity.
Dench retreated to run.
Those who saw his purpose shouted to him. He looked up at them
bewildered.
They called to him to lay aside the carpet-bag. His hand was passed
through the loops, and it hung from his wrist.
He did not understand what was shouted. Possibly in his then condition
of mind he was unconscious that he was still weighted with the bag. He
ran, leaped, was flying in space over the chasm, touched the rock on
the farther side, caught at the grass; but was overbalanced, dragged
backward from the crest by the weight of the bag, and went down with a
tuft of wiry grass and hawkweed in his right hand, and disappeared in
the midst of the rock and earth that was in process of being chewed.
Now the carpet-bag, then a leg, next a hand appeared, and went under
again. Then up came the head, only next moment to be drawn beneath and
disappear in the mighty mill.