A RESURRECTION INDEED
And now a strange accident befell him--strange enough in itself,
mysterious in its significance, and marvelous as one of God's own
miracles in its results. He was going to give himself up to the Deemster
at Ballamona, but he did not any longer take the high road through the
village, for he shrank from every human face. Almost without
consciousness he followed the fenceless cart-track that went by the old
lead mine known as the Cross Vein. The disused shaft had never been
filled up and never even enclosed by a rail. It had been for years a
cause of anxiety, which nothing but its remoteness on the lone waste of
the headland had served to modify. And now Dan, who knew every foot of
the waste, and was the last man to whom danger from such an occasion
might have been feared, plodding along with absent mind in the darkness,
fell down the open shaft.
The shaft was forty-five fathoms deep, yet Dan was not so much as hurt.
At the bottom were nearly twenty-five fathoms of water, the constant
drainage of the old workings, which rose almost to the surface, or
dropped to a great depth, according to weather. This had broken his
fall. On coming to the surface, one stroke in the first instance of
dazed consciousness had landed him on a narrow ledge of rock that raked
downward from the seam. But what was his position when he realized it?
It seemed to be worse than death itself; it was a living death; it was
burial in an open grave.
Hardly had he recovered his senses when he heard something stirring
overhead. Were they footsteps, those thuds on the ear, like the first
rumble of a distant thunder-cloud? In the agony of fear he tried to
call, but his tongue clave to his mouth. Then there was some talking
near the mouth of the shaft. It came down to him like words shouted
through a black, hollow, upright pillar.
"No use, men," said one speaker, "not a foot farther after the best man
alive. It's every man for himself now, and I'll go bail it's after
ourselves they'll be going next."
And then another voice, laden with the note of pain, cried, "But they'll
take him, Uncle Billy, they'll take him, and him knowin' nothing'."
"Drove it, drove it! Come along, man alive. Lave the lad to this d--d
blather--you'd better. Let's make a slant for it. The fac's is agen us."
Dan shuddered at the sound of human voices. Buried, as he was,
twenty-five fathoms beneath the surface, the voices came to him like the
voice that the wind might make on a tempestuous night, if, as it reaches
your ear, it whispered words and fled away.
The men had gone. Who were they? What had happened? Dan asked himself if
he had not remembered one of the voices, or both. His mind was stunned
and he could not think. He could hardly be sure that in very truth he
was conscious of what occurred.
Time passed--he knew not how long or short--and again he heard voices
overhead, but they were not the voices that he had heard before.
"I apprehend that they have escaped us. But they were our men
nevertheless. I have had advices from Peel that the boat put into the
harbor two hours ago."
"Mind the old lead shaft, sir."
Dan was conscious that a footstep approached the mouth of the shaft.
"What a gulf! Lucky we didn't tumble down."
There was a short laugh--as of one who was panting after a sharp run--at
the mouth of Dan's open grave.
"This was the way they took, sir; over the head toward the Curraghs.
They were not half wise, or they would have taken the mountains for it."
"They do not know that we are in pursuit of _them_. Depend upon it they
are following _him_ up to warn him. After all, it may have been his
voice that the Deemster heard in the churchyard. He is somewhere within
arm's reach. Let us push on."
The voices ceased, the footsteps died off. Forty feet of dull, dead rock
and earth had carried the sounds away in an instant. "Stop!" cried Dan,
in the hurry of fear. Despair made him brave; fear made him fearless.
There was no response. He was alone once more, but Death was with him.
Then in the first moment of recovered consciousness he knew whose voice
it was that he had heard last, and he thanked God that his call had not
been answered. It was the voice of Jarvis Kerruish. In agony of despair
Dan perceived that the first company of men had been Quilleash and the
fisher-fellows. What fatality had prevented him from crying aloud to the
only persons on earth who could have rescued and saved him? Dan realized
that his crime was known, and that he was now a hunted man.
It was then that he knew how hopeless was his plight. He must not cry
for help; he must stand still as death in his deep tomb. To be lifted
out of this pit by the men who were in search of him would be, as it
would seem, to be dragged from his hiding-place, and captured in a
feeble effort to escape. What then of his brave atonement? Who would
believe that he meant to make it? It would be a mockery at which the
veriest poltroon might laugh.
Dan saw now that death encircled him on every side. To remain in the pit
was death; to be lifted out of it was death no less surely; to escape
was hopeless. But not so soon is hope conquered when it is hope of life.
Cry for help he must; be dragged out of this grave he should, let the
issue be what it could or would. To lie there and die was not human. To
live was the first duty, the first necessity, be the price of life no
less than future death.
Dan looked up at the sky; it was a small square patch of leaden gray
against the impenetrable blackness of his prison-walls. Standing on the
ledge of the rock, and steadying himself with one hand, he lifted the
other cautiously upward to feel the sides of the shaft. They were of
rock, and were quite precipitous, but had rugged projecting pieces on
which it was possible to lay hold. As he grasped one of these, a
sickening pang of hope shot through him, and wounded him worse than
despair. But it was gone in an instant. The piece of rock gave way in
his hand, and tumbled into the water below him with a hollow splash. The
sides of the shaft were of crumbling stone!
It was then, in that blind laboring of despair, that he asked himself
why he should struggle with this last of the misfortunes that had
befallen him. Was life so dear to him? Not so, or, being dear, he was
willing to lay it down. Was he not about to deliver himself to the death
that must be the first punishment of his crime? And what, after all, was
there to choose between two forms of death? Nay, if he must die, who was
no longer worthy of life, better to die there, none knowing his way of
death, than to die on the gallows.
At that thought his hair rose from its roots. He had never rightly put
it to himself until now that if he had to die for the death of Ewan he
must die the death of hanging. That horror of hanging which all men have
was stronger in Dan than in most. With the grim vision before him of a
shameful and damning death it came to him to tell himself that better, a
thousand times better, was death in that living tomb than the death that
awaited him outside it. Then he thought of his father, and of the
abasement of that good man if so great a shame overtook his son, and
thereupon, at the same breath with a prayer to God that he might die
where he was, a horrible blasphemy bolted from his lips. He was in
higher hands than his own. God had saved him from himself. At least he
was not to die on the gallows. He had but one prayer now, and it cried
in its barrenness of hope, "Let me never leave this place!" His soul was
crushed as the moth that will never lift wing again.
But at that his agony took another turn. He reflected that, if God's
hand was keeping him from the just punishment of his crime, God was
holding him back from the atonement that was to wash his crime away. At
this thought he was struck with a great trembling. He wrestled with it,
but it would not be overcome. Had he not parted with Mona with the firm
purpose of giving himself up to the law? Yet at every hour since that
parting some impediment had arisen. First, there were the men in the
shed at the creek, their resolve to bury the body, and his own weak
acquiescence; then came the dead calm out at sea when he stood at the
tiller, and the long weary drifting on the wide waters; and now there
was this last strange accident. It was as if a higher will had willed it
that he should die before his atonement could be made. His spirit sank
yet lower, and he was for giving up all as lost. In the anguish of
despair he thought that in very deed it must be that he had committed
the unpardonable sin. This terrible idea clung to him like a leech at a
vein. And then it came to him to think what a mockery his dream of
atonement had been. What atonement could a bad man make for spilling the
blood of a good one? He could but send his own wasted life after a life
well spent. Would a righteous God take that for a just balance?
Mockeries of mockeries! No, no; let him die where he now was, and let
his memory be blotted out, and his sin be remembered no more.
He tried to compose himself, and pressed one hand hard at his breast to
quiet the laboring of his heart. He began to reckon the moments. In this
he had no object, or none save only that mysterious longing of a dying
man to know how the hour drags on. With the one hand that was free he
took out his watch, intending to listen for the beat of its seconds; but
his watch had stopped; no doubt it was full of water. His heart beat
loud enough. Then he went on to count--one, two, three. But his mind was
in a whirl, and he lost his reckoning. He found that he had stopped
counting, and forgotten the number. Whether five minutes or fifty had
passed, he could not be sure.
But time was passing. The wind began to rise. At first Dan felt nothing
of it as he stood in his deep tomb. He could hear its thin hiss over the
mouth of the shaft, and that was all. But presently the hiss deepened to
a sough. Dan had often heard of the wind's sob. It was a reality, and no
metaphor, as he listened to the wind now. The wind began to descend.
With a great swoop it came down the shaft, licked the walls, gathered
voice from the echoing water at the bottom, struggled for escape, roared
like a caged lion, and was once more sucked up to the surface, with a
noise like the breaking of a huge wave over a reef. The tumult of the
wind in the shaft was hard to bear, but when it was gone it was the
silence that seemed to be deafening. Then the rain began to fall. Dan
knew this by the quick, monotonous patter overhead. But no rain touched
him. It was driven aslant by the wind, and fell only against the
uppermost part of the walls of the shaft. Sometimes a soft thin shower
fell over him. It was like a spray from a cataract, except that the
volume of water from which it came was above and not beneath him.
It was then in the deadly sickness of fear that there came to Dan the
dread of miscarrying forever if he should die now. He seemed to see what
it was to die unredeemed. Not to be forgiven, but to be forever
accursed, to be cut off from the living that live in God's peace?--the
dead darkness of that doom stood up before him. Life had looked very
dear to him before, but what now of everlasting death? He was as one who
was dead before his death came. Live he could not, die he dared not. His
past life rose up in front of him, and he drank of memory's very dregs.
It was all so fearsome and strange that as he recalled its lost hours
one by one it was as if he were a stranger to himself. He saw himself,
like Esau, who for a morsel of meat had sold his birthright, and could
thereafter find no acceptance, though he sought it with tears. The
Scripture leaped to his mind which says, "It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God."
And then from the past to the future his mind went on in a rapid and
ceaseless whirl. He saw himself fleeing as from the face of a dreadful
judge. Tossed with the terror of a dreadful doom, he saw his place in
the world, cold, empty, forsaken. He saw his old father, too, the
saintly Bishop, living under the burden of a thousand sorrows, while he
who was the life of the good man's life, but his no longer, was a
restless, wandering soul, coming as a cold blast of wind between him and
his heaven. That thought was the worst terror of all, and Dan heard a
cry burst from his throat that roused echoes of horror in the dark pit.
Then, as if his instinct acted without help from his mind, Dan began to
contemplate measures for escape. That unexpected softness of the rock
which had at first appalled him began now to give him some painful
glimmerings of hope. If the sides of the shaft had been of the slate
rock of the island the ledge he had laid hold of would not have crumbled
in his hand. That it was soft showed that there must be a vein of
sandstone running across the shaft. Dan's bewildered mind recalled the
fact that Orris Head was a rift of red sand and soft sandstone. If this
vein were but deep enough his safety was assured. He could cut niches
into it with a knife, and so, perhaps, after infinite pain and labor,
reach the surface.
Steadying himself with one hand, Dan felt in his pockets for his knife.
It was not there! Now indeed his death seemed certain. He was icy cold
and feverishly hot at intervals. His clothes were wet; the water still
dripped from them, and fell into the hidden tarn beneath in hollow
drops. But not to hope now would have been not to fear. Dan remembered
that he had a pair of small scissors which he had used three days ago in
scratching his name on the silver buckle of his militia belt. When
searching for his knife he had felt it in his pocket, and spurned it for
resembling the knife to the touch of his nervous fingers. Now, it was to
be his sole instrument. He found it again, and with this paltry help he
set himself to his work of escape from the dark, deep tunnel that stood
upright.
The night was wearing on; hour after hour went by. The wind dropped; the
rain ceased to patter overhead. Dan toiled on step over step. Resting
sometimes on the largest and firmest of the projecting ledges, he looked
up at the sky. The leaden gray had changed to a dark blue, studded with
stars. The moon arose very late, being in its last quarter, and much
beset by rain-clouds. It shone a little way down the shaft, lighting all
the rest. Dan knew it must be early morning. One star, a large, full
globe of light, twinkled directly above him. He sat long and watched it,
and turned again and again in his toilsome journey to look at it. At one
moment it crept into his heart that the star was a symbol of hope to
him. Then he twisted back to his work, and when he looked again the star
was gone--it had moved beyond his ken, it had passed out of the range of
his narrow spot of heaven. Somehow, it had been a mute companion.
Dan's spirit sank in his cheerless solitude, but he toiled on. His
strength was far spent. The moon died off, and the stars went out one
after one. Then a deep cloud of darkness overspread the little sky
above. Dan knew it must be the darkness that precedes the dawn. He had
reached a ledge of rock that was wider than any of the ledges that were
beneath it. Clearly enough a wooden rafter had lain along it. Dan rested
and looked up. At that moment he heard the light patter of little feet
overhead. It was a stray sheep, a lamb of last year's flock, wandering
and lost. Though he could not see it, he knew it was there, and it
bleated down the shaft. The melancholy cry of the lost creature in that
dismal place touched a seared place on Dan's heart, and made the tears
which he had not shed until now to start from his eyes. What old memory
did it awaken? He could not recall it at first, but then he remembered
the beautiful story which he had heard many times of the lost lamb that
came to the church porch at the christening of Ewan. Was it strange that
there and then his thoughts turned to Ewan's child, the babe that was
innocent of its great sorrows to come? He began to wish himself a little
child again, walking by his father's hand, with all the years rolled
back, and all the transgressions of the years blotted out as a cloud,
and with a new spirit sweet and fresh, where now was a spirit seared and
old, and one great aching wound. In a moment the outcast lamb went off,
sending up, as it went, its pitiful cry into the night. Dan was alone
once more, but that visitation had sweetly refreshed his spirit.
Then it came back to him to think that of a surety it was not all one
whether he died where he was, never coming alive from his open tomb, or
died for his crime before the faces of all men. He must live, he must
live, though not for life's sake, but to rob death of its worst terrors.
And as for the impediments that had arisen to prevent the atonement on
which his mind was set, they were not from God to lay his soul outside
the reach of mercy, but from the devil to beset him and keep him back
from the washing away of his sin. This thought revived him, and he
turned to his task with a new resolve.
His fingers were chilled to the bone, and his clothes clung like damp
cerements to his body. The meagre blades of the scissors were worn
short; they could not last long. He rose to his feet on the ledge of
rock, and plunged the scissors into the blank wall above him, and at
that a fresh disaster seemed to overwhelm him. His hand went into soft
earth; the vein of rock had finished, and above it must be loose,
uncertain mold!
He gasped at the discovery. A minute since life had looked very dear.
Must he abandon his hopes after all? He might have been longer vexed
with this new fear, but that he recalled at that moment the words spoken
by Jarvis Kerruish as he went by on the road that ran near the mouth of
the shaft. Was it not clear that Quilleash and the fisher-fellows were
being pursued as his associates? Without his evidence to clear them,
would they not surely suffer, innocent though they might be, and even
though he himself lay dead in this place? Now, indeed, he saw that he
must of a certainty escape from this death in life, no difficulties
conquering him.
Dan paused and reflected. As nearly as he could remember, he had made
twenty niches in the rock. Hence, he must be fully thirty-five feet from
the water and ten from the surface. Only ten feet, and then freedom! Yet
these ten seemed to represent an impossibility. To ascend by holes dug
deep in the soft earth was a perilous enterprise. A great clod of soil
might at any moment give away above or beneath him, and then he would be
plunged once more into the pit. If he fell from the side of the shaft he
would be more likely than at first, when he fell from the top, to strike
on one of the projecting ledges and be killed before reaching the water.
There was nothing left but to wait for the dawn. Perhaps the daylight
would reveal some less hazardous method of escape. Slowly the dull,
dead, impenetrable blackness was lifted off. It was as though a spirit
had breathed on the night, and it fled away. When the woolly hue of
morning dappled his larger sky, Dan could hear the slow beat of the
waves on the shore. The coast rose up before his vision then, silent,
solemn, alone with the dawn. The light crept into his prison-house, and
he looked down at the deep black tarn beneath him.
And now hope rose in his hearth again. Overhead he saw timbers running
around and across the shaft. These had been used to bank up the earth,
and to make two grooves in which the ascending and descending cages had
once worked. Dan lifted up his soul in thankfulness. The world was once
more full of grace even for him. He could climb from stay to stay, and
so reach the surface. Catching one of the stays in his uplifted hands,
he swung his knee on to another. One stage he accomplished, and then how
stiff were his joints, and how sinewless his fingers! Another and
another stage he reached, and then four feet and no more were between
him and the gorse that waved in the light of the risen sun across the
mouth of his night-long tomb.
But the rain of years had eaten into these timbers. In some places they
crumbled, and were rotten. God! how the one on which he rested creaked
under him at that instant! Another minute, and then his toilsome journey
would be over. Another minute, and his dead self would be left behind
him, buried forever in this grave. Then there would be a resurrection in
very truth. Yes, truly, God helping him.
Half an hour later Dan Mylrea, with swimming eyes and a big heart, was
walking toward the Deemster at Ballamona. The flush of the sun newly
risen, and the brighter glory of a great hope newly born, was on his
worn and pallid cheek. What terrors had life for him now? It had none.
And very soon death also would lose its sting. Atonement! atonement! It
was even as he had thought: a wasted life for a life well spent, the
life of a bad man for the life of a good one, but all he had to
give--all, all!
And when he came to lay his offering at the merciful Father's feet it
would not be spurned.