It was obvious to Captain Twinely that Neal Ward’s instinct would be
to make for Dunseveric. He spread the men under his command, and the
members of a couple of corps similar to his own, in bands of five
or six, across a broad belt of country. He arranged what he called
a “drive,” and pushed slowly northward, searching every possible
hiding-place as he went. It seemed to him totally impossible that
Neal could escape. Sooner or later he was sure to come on him, and
then--Captain Twinely chuckled grimly at the thought that he would leave
no chance of a fourth escape.
This excellently-planned search resulted in the discovery of Captain
Twinely’s clothes, damp and somewhat muddy, in a ditch about a mile out
of the town. It did not end in the capture of the fugitive, because
it was founded on a miscalculation. Neal did not make straight for
Dunseveric. When he got out of the town and changed his clothes he went
to Donegore Hill. M’Cracken and Hope were there with the remains of
their army, and Neal was most anxious to join them. The murder of Peg
MacIlrea had made him so furiously angry that he cared nothing about his
own safety. His escape from Antrim was a matter of satisfaction mainly
because it seemed to afford him another opportunity for fighting. He
neither attempted to weigh the chances of success nor considered the
uselessness of continuing the struggle. He wanted vengeance taken on men
whom he hated, and he wanted to have some share himself in taking it.
He found the roads round Donegore Hill guarded by sentries. The camp
on the top of the old rath had all the appearance of being held by
disciplined troops. There was little sign of the disorganisation and
panic which often follow defeat. The men were calm, self-possessed, and
reasonable, but they were hopeless. Neal realised that this army, at
least, would do no more serious fighting. The men were anxious to make
terms for themselves and for their leaders. They were perfectly well
aware that they were beaten, and could not expect to make any head
against their enemies.
Neal found James Hope, and was warmly greeted by him.
“When I discovered that we’d left you behind,” said Hope, “I made up
my mind that you must have been shot down along with your uncle and the
fine fellows who made a stand with him. Ah, Neal, we’ve lost many--your
uncle, Felix Marier, poor Moylin, and many another. One killed here,
another there, but all of them in doing their duty. But we mustn’t talk
of these things, lad. Tell me, what brings you here?”
“Need you ask?” said Neal. “I am come to fight it out to the last.”
“Take my advice and slip off home. There’s no good to be done by
stopping with us. Things are desperate. Most of our people are going
home to-day. M’Cracken and a handful--not more than a hundred--are going
to Slievemis in the hope of being able to join Monro in County Down, or
perhaps to get through to the Wexford men.”
“I will go with you.”
“No, no, lad, you’ve done enough. You’ve done a man’s part. Go home
now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I? Oh, I’m only a poor weaver. It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m going
on with M’Cracken.”
“So am I. Listen to me, James Hope, till I tell you what is in my
mind--till I tell you what has happened to me since yesterday.”
They sat on the grassy slope of the old rath. The wide plain stretched
before them--green, well wooded, beautiful. There lay Adair’s
plantations, the Six Mile Water winding like a serpent among the fields,
the woods of Castle Upton, and the young trees on Lyle Hill, with the
distant water of Lough Neagh glistening in the sunlight. Nearer at hand
thatched farmhouses smoked, signs that the yeomen were enjoying the
fruits of victory. Hope pointed to Farranshane, where William Orr’s
house was burning--a witness to a malignity so bitter that it wreaked
the vengeance from which the dead man was safe on his widow and his
orphans.
Neal told his story, and spoke of the passionate desire for revenge
which burned in him. Hope listened patiently to every word. Then he
spoke.
“If I were to tell you now, Neal, as I told you once before, that
vengeance belongeth only unto the Lord, you would turn away and listen
to me no more. Therefore, I shall not speak to you in that way at all,
or appeal to those higher feelings which the great God has planted
in the breasts of even the humblest of His servants. I will, instead,
appeal to that which is lower and smaller than the religion of Christ,
and which yet may be in its way a noble thing. I will speak to you as to
a man of honour. I am not fond of the title of gentleman, but I think I
know what is meant by honour. Sometimes it is no more than a fantastic
image bred of prejudice and pride; but sometimes it is high and holy,
next to God. I think, Neal, that you would like to reckon yourself a man
of honour.”
Already James Hope’s words were producing an effect on Neal’s mind. The
extreme bitterness of his passion was dying away from him.
“You are right,” he said, “I wish to act always as a man of honour, but
my honour is engaged----”
“That is not what you said before. Before, you spoke of revenge and not
of honour. But let that pass. I will try to show you, as a truly noble
man would, as your friend, Lord Dunseveric, would if he were here to
advise you, how your honour really binds you. You were rescued from
your imprisonment last night and from death this morning by your friend,
Maurice St. Clair, and he bid you go home. He set you free in order that
you might go home. I think he would not have done what he did unless he
had believed that you would go home. You are in honour bound to him. You
are in reality still a prisoner--a prisoner released on parole, although
no formal promise was required of you. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, I understand; but you are advising me to do a cowardly thing--to
desert you, whom I reckon my friend, in the time of your extremity.”
“Maurice St. Clair was your friend before I was, Neal. You are bound to
him by earlier ties. Besides, he has given you your life.”
“But he is in no danger.”
“I am not sure of that. If it is discovered that he let you go last
night he will surely suffer for it. They have hanged men for less, and
imprisoned or exiled others.”
“Oh,” said Neal, “I could find it in my heart to wish they would hang
Maurice. Hope, you know many men and many things, but you don’t know
Lord Dunseveric. Why, man, if they hanged Maurice the old lord would
hang them--he would hang them in batches of a score at a time. If any
escaped him he would wait for them till the resurrection morning. He
would meet them as they stepped out of their graves and hang them then.
He would hang them if there wasn’t another tree in the whole universe to
put the rope round except the tree of life which stands by the river in
the New Jerusalem.”
He laughed exultingly. Hope looked at him with pitying tenderness. He
understood the hysterical passion which had dragged such words from him.
“I am glad,” he said, “that your friend is in no great danger, but that
does not alter the truth of what I say. You are his prisoner, released
on your parole, and you must present yourself to him when he calls for
you at Dunseveric. Besides, Neal, you owe a duty to your father and to
those at home who love you. For their sakes you must not throw your life
away.”
The anger died out of Neal’s heart. This last appeal left him with no
feeling but tenderness. He thought of his father, a lone man, waiting
for news of him, of Donald, of the battle, and the cause. He thought of
Una St. Clair and the ever-new marvel of the love that she had confessed
to him. Still he hesitated. Brought up in the stern faith of the
Puritans, he believed that because a thing offered a prospect of great
delight it must somehow be wrong. The longing to see Una again came
on him, sweeping over all other thought and emotion as the flowing
spring-tide in late September sweeps over the broad sands of the
northern coast. To see her, to hear her, to touch her, perhaps to kiss
her again, was the one thing supremely desirable in life. Therefore, he
felt instinctively that it must be a tempter’s voice which showed him
the way to the fulfilment of such desire.
“Are you sure,” he asked, “that you are not, out of love for me,
advising me to do wrong?”
“I am sure,” said Hope.
Afterwards they talked of how Neal might best accomplish his journey to
Dunseveric. It was clear to Hope, as it had been to Maurice St. Clair,
that the main roads must be avoided, and that all travelling must be
done by night; but it was not very easy to go through an unknown country
by night, and until Neal got as far as Ballymoney he could not be sure
of being able to find his way.
“I might manage it,” he said, “if I could keep to the main road. I have
travelled it once and I think I should not miss it even at night, but
how am I to get along lanes and across fields which I have never seen
without losing myself?”
“Ah,” said Hope, “that is a difficulty, and yet there is a way out of
it. Phelim, the blind piper, is with us here. God knows how he got safe
from the battle yesterday, and found his way to us. He will be no use to
us any more, only a hindrance. We shall not march to battle again with
our pipes playing and our colours flying. I think I shall be able to
persuade him to act as your guide. The blind leading the ignorant, eh,
Neal? But Phelim knows every lane and path in the country. How he does
I don’t know. Perhaps some new sense is developed in the blind.
Anyway, night and day are alike to him. If he takes you as far as the
neighbourhood of Ballymoney you’ll be able to find the rest of the way
afterwards yourself.”
That night, while M’Cracken marched the remnant of his army to
Slievemis, Neal and blind Phelim set off on their journey north. They
travelled safely in the rear of the yeomen who were searching the
country side. Neal lay hid all one day in a little wood while
Phelim, who seemed to want little rest and no sleep, wandered in the
neighbourhood and brought back tidings of the doings of the yeomen who
had passed. Before daybreak the next morning Neal left his guide behind
him and made his way to the sandhills near Port Ballin-trae. He lay in a
hollow near the mouth of the river Bush. He understood from what Phelim
had told him that Captain Twinely and his men had pushed northwards in
pursuit of him, and that he had followed in their tracks. He realised
that there must be a large force gathered in Bushmills and Ballintoy,
and that the whole country would be scoured to find him. Therefore,
though he was within a few miles of his home, he dare not stir in the
daytime. He lay in his sandy hollow through the long hot day, with the
sound of the sea in his ears. He slept for an hour or two now and then.
Once he crept among the dunes to a place where a little stream trickled
down, in order to get a drink, but he did not venture to stay beside
the stream. For some time he amused himself by plaiting the spiked grass
into stiff green rods, and then, from a razor shell which he found in
his hollow, he fashioned pike heads for the ends of the rods. Afterwards
he picked all the yellow crow-toes within reach, and the broad mauve
flowers of the wild convolvulus. He set them out in gay beds, like
flowers growing in gardens, and edged them round with borders of wild
thyme. Then, with great labour, he collected forty or fifty snail shells
and laid them in rows, making each row consist only of those like each
other in colouring. He had lines of dark brown shells, of pale yellow,
and of striped shells. These again he subdivided according to the width
and number of their stripes. Once he ventured to creep to a place from
which he could watch the sea. He saw that the tide was flowing. Below
him on the strand were a number of seagulls, strutting, fluttering,
shrieking, splashing with wing-tips and feet in the oncoming waves. He
supposed that the young fry of some fish must have drifted shorewards,
and that the birds were feasting on them. Then’, at the far end of the
bay, he saw men’s figures moving, near the Black Rock, among the boats
hauled up on the shore in the creek from which he and Maurice and Una
had set out to fish on Rackle Roy. A dread seized him that these might
be yeomen. Since he had come within reach of home, since he had seen and
heard the sea, since he had breathed the familiar salt-laden air, his
courage had left him. He felt a very coward, desperately anxious not to
be caught and dragged back again to the horror of death. He wanted to
live now that he was back at home and almost within reach of Una.
He eyed the distant figures anxiously, and then crept back and lay
trembling in his hollow among his ordered snail-shells and the flowers,
already withered, which he had plucked and planted in the sand.
At last the sun set. Neal waited for an hour while the June twilight
slowly faded. He watched the sandhills round his lair turn from bright
yellow to grey, watched them while they seemed in the fading light to
grow loftier, and assume a weird majesty which was not their’s in
the daytime. The objects near at hand, the faded flowers, and the
snail-shells, and the rods of woven bent, lost their bright colours and
became almost invisible. The eternal roaring of the sea seemed to be
subdued, as if even it felt awed by the stillness of the June night.
The sand on which he lay was damped with dew. Only the sharp cry of the
corncrake broke the solemnity of the night.
He rose, and, peering anxiously before him as each fresh stretch of his
way became visible, crossed the sandhills. Avoiding the stepping-stones
and the regular crossing-place, he waded through the brook which ran
gurgling between the sandhills and the rough track beyond them. He
crossed it, and, skirting the rear of a cottage, reached the top of the
Runkerry cliffs. Far below him the sea rushed, white-lipped, against the
rocks. The tide was almost full. The scene was as it had been ten days
ago, ten years ago, a whole lifetime ago, when he walked this same way
with Donald Ward. Still keeping close to the sea, he avoided the high
road near the Causeway, plodded along the stony track past the Rocking
Stone and the Wishing Well, climbed the Shepherd’s Path, and once more
walked along the verge of the cliff above Port na Spaniard and the Horse
Shoe Bay and Pleaskin Head. He reached Port Moon, and saw far below
him the glimmer of a light in the rude shelter where fishermen lodge in
summer time. Avoiding the farmhouse near him on his right, and the lane
which led past it to the high road, he went on, clinging close to the
sea as if for safety. He rested a while in the shelter of the ruins of
Dun-severic Castle, and then went on till his feet were stumbling among
the graves of Templeastra, where the dust of his mother lay. It was dark
now. He guessed that he must have been an hour and a half on his way. He
came close to the manse--his home. Below him lay Ballintoy Strand, with
its sentinel white rocks which keep eternal watch against invading seas.
Between him and his home there was the road to cross and the meadow to
wade through. It must, as he guessed, be eleven o’clock. His father
and Hannah Macaulay would be in bed. He would have to rouse them with
cautious tapping upon window panes.
He reached the back of the house at last, and saw, to his amazement,
that a light burned in the kitchen, and that the door stood wide open.
A dread seized him. Perhaps the house was occupied by soldiers. For a
moment he thought of turning back again to the sea and the cliffs. But
he wanted food, and it was absolutely necessary for him to communicate
with some one. His plan was to lie hid in the Pigeon Cave, but he must
have food brought to him day by day, and he must let his father or
Hannah know where he was going.
Very cautiously he crept forward and peered through the window. There
was a candle in its tall iron stand on the floor, and the peat fire
burned brightly on the hearth. A row of brass candlesticks were on the
mantel-board. Hannah Macaulay sat on a chair near the door knitting. The
room, he saw, was neat and orderly as ever.
The lids of the pots and the metal dish-covers gleamed from the nails
on which they hung round the walls. The pewter plates, bronze jugs,
and upturned noggins stood in shining rows on the dresser shelves. Neal
waited. Not a sound reached him from the house. He took courage and
slipped through the open door.
“Is that you yoursel’, Master Neal?” said Hannah, quietly, “I ha’ your
supper ready for ye. I was sitting up for you. You’re late the night.”
She rose from her seat and, without a sign of surprise or excitement,
closed the door and bolted it.
“Hannah, how is it that you are expecting me? You can’t have known that
I was coming. How did you know?”
Hannah took plates from the dresser and food from the cupboard while she
answered him.
“Master Maurice’s groom, the lad they call James, rode in from Antrim
the day afore yesterday with a note for Miss Una ower by. She tellt
me that you’d be coming and that it was more nor like you’d travel by
night. I’ve had your supper ready, and I’ve sat waiting for you these
two nights, I knew rightly that it was here you’d come first.”
“Where is my father?”
“He’s gone, Master Neal. The sojers came and took him, but he bid me
tell you not to be afeard or taking on about him. He was thinking they’d
send him across the sea, maybe to Scotland, he said, but they wouldna
hurt him. So eat your bit and take your sup, my bairn. You must be sore
troubled with the hunger. How ever did ye thole?”
“I have your bed ready for you,” she said as Neal ate, “and it’s in it
you ought to be by right. I’m thinking it’s more than yin night since ye
hae lain atween the sheets, judging by the looks of ye.”
“It’s five, Hannah, and it will be twice five more before I sleep in a
bed again. I dare not stay here.”
“Thon’s what Miss Una said. But, faith, if it’s the yeomen you’re afeard
of, I’ll no let them near you.”
“I daren’t, Hannah; I daren’t do it. I must away to-night and lie in the
Pigeon Cave. I’ll be safe there, and you must manage somehow to get food
to me.”
“Is it me that you look to be climbing down them sliddery rocks and
swimming intil the cold sea among your caves and hiding holes? I’m too
old for the like, but there’s a lassie with bonny brown eyes that’ll do
that and more for ye. Don’t you be afeard, Master Neal. She’d climb
the Causey chimney pots and take the silver sixpence off the top if
she thought you were wanting it. Ay, or swim intil them caves, that God
Almighty never meant for man nor maid to enter, and if were waiting for
her at the hinder end of one of them. She’s been here an odd time or twa
since ever she got the letter that the groom lad fetched. I’ve seen the
glint in her eyes at the sound o’ your name, and the red go out of her
cheek at word of them dratted yeos, bad scran to them! I’m no so old
yet, but I mind weel how a young lassie feels for the lad she’s after.
Ay, my bairn, it’s all yin, gentle or simple, lord’s daughter or
beggar’s wench, when the love of a lad has got the grip o’ them. And
there was yin with her--the foreign lady with the lang name. For all
that she mocks and fleers as if there was nothing in the wide world but
play-actin’ and gagin’ about. Faith, she’s an artist, but she might be
more help than Miss Una herself if it came to a pinch. She’s a cunning
one, that. I’m thinking that she’s no unlike the serpent that’s more
subtle than any beast of the field. She has a way of glowerin’ a body
and giving a bit of a girn to her mouth. Man or woman or red-coated
sojer itself, they’d need to be up gey an’ early that would get the
better o’ her. A bird might be lang afore it could find time to build a
nest in her ear, so it might. Eh! but, my poor lad, it’s a sorry thing
to think of ye lyin’ the night through among the hard stones and me in
my warm bed. Eh! but it grieves me sore---- whisht, boy, what’s thon?”
Hannah started to her feet. Hand to ear, lips parted, with eager eyes
and head bent forward she listened.
“It’s the tread of horses; they’re coming up the loany.”
“I must run for it,” said Neal, “let me out of the door, Hannah.”
“Bide now, bide a wee, they’d see you if you went through the door.”
She put out the lamp as she spoke.
“Do you slip through to the master’s room and open the window. Go canny
now, and make no noise. Get through and off with ye into your cave as
hard as ever you can lift a foot, I’ll cap them at the door, lad. I’m
the woman can do it. Faith and I’ll sort them, be they who it may, so as
they’ll no be in too great a hurry to come ridin’ to this house again,
the black-hearted villains. But I’ll learn them manners or I’m done wi’
them else my name’s no Hannah Macaulay.”
Neal, as he slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah
meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the
long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust
the end of it into the heart of the fire.
There was a knock at the door. Hannah, standing in a corner of the room,
and hidden from any one looking in through the window, neither spoke nor
stirred. The knocking was repeated, and again repeated. Hannah remained
silent.
“Open the door,” shouted a voice from without, “open the door at once.”
Still there was no reply.
“We know you’re within, Hannah Macaulay, we saw the light before you put
it out. Open to us, or we’ll batter in the door, and then it will be the
worse for you.”
“And who may be you that come knocking and banging the door of a dacent
house at this time o’ night, making a hullabaloo fit for to wake the
dead; and it the blessed Sabbath too?”
“Sabbath be damned; it’s Thursday night.”
“Is it, then, is it? There’s them that wouldn’t know if it was Monday
nor Tuesday, nor yet Wednesday, nor the blessed Sabbath day itself, and,
what’s more, wouldn’t care if they did know. That just shows what like
lads you are. Away home out o’ this to your beds, if so be that you have
any beds to go to.”
In fact the men outside were perfectly right. The day was Thursday,
though it neared Friday. The Sabbath was a long way off yet, as Hannah
knew quite well.
“You doited old hag, open the door.”
“I’m a lone widow woman,” said Hannah, plaintively, “I canna be letting
the likes of ye in and me in my bed. It wouldna be dacent if I did.
Where’d my good name be if I did the like and me not know ye?”
A savage kick at the door shook it on its hinges.
“Bide quiet, now,” said Hannah, “and tell me who ye are afore I open
to you. Would you have me let robbers intil the house, and the master
awa’?”
“We’re men of the Killulta yeomanry, we’re here to search the house by
order of Captain Twinely. Open in the King’s name.”
“Why couldn’t ye have tellt me that afore? There isn’t a woman living
has as much respect for the King as mysel’. Wait now, wait till I slip
on my petticoat. You wouldna have a woman come to the door to you in her
shift, would ye?”
There was a long pause--too long for the yeomen outside. Another kick,
and then another, shook the door. Hannah went over to it and began to
fumble with the bolt.
“I’m afeard,” she said, “that the lock’s hampered.”
“I’ll soon cure that; stand clear of the keyhole till I fire.”
“For the Lord’s sake, man, dinna be shootin’ aff your guns, I canna
abide the sound o’ the like. It dizzens me. Dinna be hasty, fair and
easy goes far in the day. Who is it you said you were?”
“The yeomen, you deaf old hag.”
“The yeomen, God bless us, the yeomen. That’s the kind of lads that
dresses themselves up braw in sojers’ coats and then, when there’s any
fighting going on, let’s the real sojers do it, and they stand and look
round to see the gommerels admiring them. Faith I’ll let you in. There’s
no call even for a hirplin ould woman with one foot in the grave and the
ither out of it to be afeard of the likes of you.”
Hannah Macaulay’s description of her bodily condition erred on the
side of self-depreciation. The one foot which remained out of the grave
carried her across the kitchen floor with remarkable speed. She took the
poker now red, almost white, hot at the end, darted back to the door,
and flung it open. With a wild whoop she rushed at the two yeomen who
stood on the threshold. There were other yells besides her’s, a smell
of burning cloth and singed flesh, a hurried treading of feet, and a
clattering of the hoofs of frightened horses. Hannah sent into the night
a peal of derisive laughter, and then turned into the house and shut the
door.
“I said I’d sort them,” she chuckled, “and I’ve sorted them rightly. Yin
o’ them will carry a mark on his mug to the day of his death, and lucky
if he hasn’t lost the sight of an eye. There’ll be a hole in the breeks
of the other that’ll tak a quare width of cloth to make a patch for
it. And, what’s more, thon man’ll no sit easy on his horse for a bit.
They’ll not be for chasing Master Neal the night any way. But, faith,
this house will be no place for me the morrow. I’ll just tak my wee bit
duds under my arm and away with me up to Dunseveric House. Miss Una’ll
take me in when she hears the tale I ha’ to tell. I’d like to see the
yeos or the sojers either that would fetch me out of the ould lord’s
kitchen. If they tak to ravishing and rieving the master’s plenishins I
canna help it. Better a ravished house nor a murdered woman.”
Neal got out of the window, and once more crossed the meadow. He lay for
a minute in the ditch beside the road listening intently. He feared that
he might have been tracked home, that the house might be surrounded, and
that escape might be difficult or impossible. But there was no sound
of any sort on the road--neither voices of men, treading of horses, or
jangling of accoutrements. Evidently the men at the door of the manse
were no more than a patrol. They were entering the house out of wanton
desire to annoy Hannah Macaulay or on the chance of discovering there
something which might give them a clue--not because they actually
suspected that he was within. He heard the crash of the first kick on
the door, rose from the ditch, crossed the road, and took to the edge of
the cliffs again. He walked quickly, frightened and shaken. He started
into a breathless run when Hannah’s battle whoop reached him on the
still air. He heard distinctly the men’s shrieks, and even the noise of
the runaway horses galloping on the hard road. He went the faster--a mad
terror driving him.
He passed Port Moon again, crossed the majestic brow of Pleaskin Head,
skirted the Causeway, and reached the Runkerry cliffs. He went more
slowly, ceased running, sat down, drawing deep laboured breaths. The
food he ate in the manse had strengthened him. The assurance of the care
and watchfulness of his friends cheered him, but his mind was like that
of a hunted animal. He had no courage left, nothing but an overmastering
desire to hide himself.
He rose, and went on again, reached the cliff above the Rock Pigeons’
Cave, and found the place where descent to the sea was possible. There
was no path, just a precipitous grass slope, and then steep rocks, and
below them the dark, moaning sea. A timid man might shrink from the
climb in daylight, a bold man would be rash to attempt it at night, but
of this short, slippery grass and these sharp rocks Neal had no fear at
all. He knew them all too well to fear them. He let himself slide down,
sure of the resting-place his feet would find. With firm hand-grips and
confident steps he descended from rock to rock until he stood at last
on a flat shelf, a foot or two above the sea. He saw the long channel,
rock-bounded, narrow, dark, along which he and Maurice had piloted
their boat. He saw beyond it the mouth of the cave--a space of actual
blackness on the gloomy face of the cliff. He heard the water drop from
the roof into the sea with heavy splashes. At his feet the long swell
writhed between the walls of rock, reached up black lips and drew them
down again with hollow, sobbing sound. From the extreme darkness of the
cave came the dull moaning of the ocean, as of some inarticulate monster
bowed with everlasting woe. A swim through this cold, lonely water,
between the smooth walls which rose higher and higher on either side,
into the impenetrable gloom of the echoing cavern and on to the extreme
end of it, was horrible to contemplate. But for Neal there were worse
horrors behind. His cowardice made him brave. He stripped and stood
shivering, though the night air was warm enough. He wrapped his clothes
into a bundle and, with his neck scarf, bound them firmly on his head.
He slipped without a splash into the water and struck out towards the
mouth of the cave.
The dull swell lifted him on its breast and drew him down again as if to
wrap him with huge cold hands. An undertow of receding water pulled him
to the rocks and he touched them with his hands. He reached the mouth of
the cave, and felt the splash of the drops which fell from it. He moved
very cautiously, fearing to strike suddenly on the sunken rocks. He felt
for them with his feet, reached them, stood upright waist-deep. Then,
with cold limbs and a numb terror in his heart, he plunged forward
again into the deep water within the cave. He swam on, with set teeth,
close-pressed lips, and eyes strained to see a foot in front of him into
the blackness. Once he turned and looked back. Through the mouth of the
cave he saw the dim grey of the June night--a framed space of sky which
was not actually black. He felt as if he were looking his last at the
familiar world of living things--as if he were on his way to some gloomy
other world of moaning, forlorn spirits, of desolate, disappointed
loves, of weary, spent souls floating aimlessly on chill, unfathomable
sorrow. He swam on, and heard at last the splash of the waves on the
shore. His feet touched bottom. He slipped and slid among large slimy
stones, worn incredibly smooth by their age-long washing in this sunless
place. He struggled forward breast-deep, waist-deep, knee-deep, in the
black water. He reached dry ground, crawled upwards till he felt the
boulders no longer damp, and knew that he lay above the reach of the
tide. He unbound the bundle from his head, clothed himself, and felt
the blood steal warm through his limbs again. He staggered further up,
groped his way to the side of the cave, as if the touch of solid rock
would give him some sense of companionship. Then, like a benediction
from the God who watched over him, sleep came.