A MIST IN THE CHANNEL ENDS, AS IT BEGAN,
THE BOOK
But that letter was in Ralph Warriner's pocket, as he walked the deck
of the P. and O. It was dated from a hotel at Dartmouth, whence, said
the Major, he was starting on a little cruise westwards in the company
of a young gentleman from Oxford who owned a competence and a yacht.
The Major would be back at Dartmouth in some six weeks' time and
hoped, for Mrs. Warriner's sake, that he would find a registered
letter awaiting him. The Major was still upon his cruise, as Ralph
Warriner was assured from the recent date of the letter.
Warriner disembarked at Plymouth and took train to Dartmouth, where he
learned the name of the yacht by merely asking at the hotel. He tried
to hire a steam launch, for sooner or later in one of the harbours he
would be sure to come up with Wilbraham, if he only kept a sharp eye;
but steam launches are difficult to hire at this season of the year,
and in the end he had to content himself with chartering a ten-ton
cutter. He engaged one hand, by whose testimony the history of Ralph's
pursuit came to be known, and sailed out of Dartmouth to the west. He
sailed out in the morning, and coming to Salcombe ran over the bar on
the tail of the flood, but did not find his quarry there, and so beat
out again on the first of the ebb and reached past Bolt Head and Bolt
Tail, across Bigbury Bay with its low red rocks, to Plymouth.
Wilbraham had anchored in the Cattwater only two days before; the
yacht was a yawl, named the _Monitor_; and was making for the
Scillies. Warriner laughed when he picked up word about the
destination of the yacht, and thought it would be very appropriate if
he could overhaul the _Monitor_ somewhere off Rosevear. As to what
course he intended to pursue when he caught Wilbraham, he had no
settled plan; but on the other hand he had a new revolver in his
berth.
He put out from Plymouth under a light breeze, which failed him
altogether when he was abreast of Rame Head. Through the rest of the
day he drifted with the tide betwixt Rame Head and Plymouth. The night
came upon him jewelled with stars, and a light mist upon the surface
of the water; all that night he swung up and down some four miles out
to sea within view of Plymouth lights, but towards morning, a fitful
wind sprang up, drove the cutter as far as Polperro, and left it
becalmed on a sea of glass, in front of the little white village in
the wooded cliff-hollow, while the sun rose. Warriner opened the
narrow line of blue water which marks the mouth of the Fowey river at
eleven o'clock of the morning, and anchored in Fowey harbour about
twelve. It was a Sunday, and though the _Monitor_ was not at Fowey,
Warriner determined to stay at his anchorage till the morrow.
The Brixham fisherman who served him upon this cruise relates that
Warriner displayed no impatience or anxiety at any time. Of the
febrile instability which had set his thoughts flying this way and
that during the days of his companionship with Charnock, there was no
longer any trace in his demeanour. Perhaps it was that he was so
certain of attaining his desires; perhaps the long lesson of endurance
which he had been painfully taught in Morocco now bore its fruit;
perhaps too he had acquired something of the passive fatalism of the
Moorish race. During this Sunday afternoon, his last Sunday as it
proved, he quietly sculled the dinghy of his cutter, when the tide was
low, through the mud flats of the Fowey river to Lostwithiel; and
coming down again when the river was full, lay for a long time upon
his oars opposite a certain church that lifts above a clump of trees
on the river-bank. There he remained listening to the roll of the
organ and the sweet voices of the singers as they floated out through
the painted windows into the quiet of the summer evening; when the
service was over he bent to his sculls again and rowed back between
the steep and narrowing coppices, but it was dark before he turned the
last shoulder of hill and saw the long lines of riding-lights
trembling upon the water.
Warriner raised his anchor early on the Monday morning, and having the
wind on his quarter, made Falmouth betimes. At Falmouth he learned
that the _Monitor_ had put out past St. Anthony's light only the day
before and had sailed westwards to Penzance.
Warriner followed without delay, and when he was just past the Manacle
rocks, the wind dropped. With the help of the tide and an occasional
flaw of wind, he worked his cutter round the Lizard Point and laid her
head for Penzance across the bay; and it was then that the fog took
him. It crept out of the sea at about four of the afternoon, a thin
grey mist, and it thickened into a dense umber fog.
The fog hung upon the Channel for thirty hours. The cutter swung into
the bay with the tide. The Brixham fisherman could hear all along, to
his right hand, the muffled roar as the groundswell broke upon the
Lizard rocks, and the sucking withdrawal which told that those rocks
were very near. The Lizard fog-horn, which sounded a minute ago
abreast of them, sounded now quite faintly astern. The boat swung with
the tide and would not steer; yet Warriner betrayed no alarm and no
impatience at the check. He sat on the deck with a lantern by his side
and drew, said the fisherman, a little flute or pipe from his pocket,
on which he played tunes that were no tunes, and from which he drew a
weird shrill music of an infinite melancholy and of infinite
suggestions. Once the Brixham man crouched suddenly by the gunwale and
peered intently over the boat's side. At a little distance off,
something black loomed through the fog about the height of the mast's
yard,--something black which rapidly approached.
"It's not a squall," said Warriner, quietly interrupting his music.
"It's a rock. I know this coast well. We had better get the dinghy out
and row her head off."
When that was done, he squatted again upon the deck by the side of the
lantern, and played shrilly upon his pipe while the light threw a
grotesque reflection of his figure upon the fog.
After a while they heard the Lizard-horn abreast of them again.
"The tide has turned," said Warriner, and the Brixham man dived
hurriedly into the well for the poor fog-horn which the boat carried.
The cutter drifted out stern-foremost past the Lizard rocks, and in a
little, from this side and from that, ahead of them, astern, they
heard the throb of engines and the hoarse steam-whistles of the
Atlantic cargo-boats and liners. They had drifted across the track of
the ocean-going steamers. The Brixham man blew upon his horn till his
lungs cracked. He relates that nothing happened until three o'clock in
the morning, as he knows, since Warriner just at three o'clock took
his watch from his pocket and looked at the dial by the lantern-light.
He mentions too, as a detail which struck him at the time, that the
door of the lantern was open, and so still was the heavy air that the
candle burnt steadily as in a room. At three o'clock in the morning he
suddenly saw a glimmering flash of white upon the cutter's beam. For a
fraction of a second he was dazed. Then he lifted the horn to his
mouth, and he was still lifting it--so small an interval was there of
time--when a huge sharp wedge cut through the fog and towered above
the cutter out of sight. The wedge was the bows of an Atlantic liner.
No one on that liner heard the despairing, interrupted moan of the
tiny fog-horn beneath the ship's forefoot; no one felt the shock. The
Brixham man was hurled clear of the steamer, and after swimming for
the best part of an hour was picked up by a smack which he came upon
by chance. Warriner's body was washed up three days later upon the
Lizard rocks.
This history did not reach Charnock's ears for a full year afterwards;
for within a week of his arrival in London, where his unexplained
disappearance had puzzled very few, since he was known for a man of
many disappearances, he had started off to Asia Minor, there to survey
the line of a projected railway. The railway was never more than
projected, and after a year the survey was abandoned. Charnock
returned to London and heard the story of Warriner's death from Lady
Donnisthorpe's lips at her last reception at the end of the season.
Lady Donnisthorpe was irritated at the impassive face with which he
listened. She was yet more irritated when he said casually, without
any reference whatever to a word of her narrative, "Who is that girl?
I think I have seen her before."
Lady Donnisthorpe followed the direction of his eyes, and saw a young
girl with very pale gold hair. Lady Donnisthorpe rose from her chair.
"Perhaps you would like me to introduce you," she said with sarcastic
asperity.
"I should," replied Charnock.
Lady Donnisthorpe waved her hands helplessly and brushed away all
mankind. She led Charnock across the room, introduced him, and left
him with a manner of extreme coldness, to which Charnock at this
moment was quite impervious.
"I think I have seen you here before," said Charnock.
"Yes," said the girl, "I remember. It was some while since. Why have
you quarrelled?"
The meaning of that question dawned upon Charnock gradually. The girl
with the gold hair smiled at his perplexity, and laughed pleasantly at
his comprehension.
Charnock looked round the room.
"No," said she.
He looked towards the window, and the window was open.
"Yes," said the girl.
Charnock found Miranda upon the balcony.
THE END.