HOW I FOUND MY LOVE IN THE CLEFT
Waited till the night seemed growing old to me, for the waiting in that
dark cleft was weary work, with the water, which I could no longer see,
swelling and sinking beneath me, carrying me up and up and up, pumping and
grinding against the unseen rocks, then down and down and down into the
depths, wet and wallowing, and fearful every moment of a wound beyond
repair to my frail craft.
But at last I could wait no longer. With my hands in the rough wet walls I
hauled out of the cleft and started on my search for Carette.
The shore thereabouts was a honeycomb of sharp-toothed rocks. I took an oar
over the stern and sculled slowly and silently out from the land. I turned
to the north and felt my way among the rocks, grazing here, bumping there,
but moving so gently that no great harm was done.
I knew at last, by the changed voice of the sea on the shore, that I had
come to the first beach of shells, and there I turned the boat's nose in
and ran her softly aground.
Here, where the heights of Herm run down in green slopes to the long flat
beaches, I drew the boat well up and crept to the other side of the Island,
keeping as close to the high ground as I dared.
As soon as I came out on the western side I saw that work was still going
on busily in the little roadstead, and so far I was in time. The rocky
heights sloped gradually on that side also. The schooner had to lie in the
roads, and everything had to be conveyed to her by boat. There was much
traffic between her and the shore, and the work was carried on by the light
of many lamps.
Now where would they have stowed Carette? On the ship? In one of the
cottages? In the natural prison where they had kept me? The only three
possibilities I had been able to think of. To reduce them to two I would
try the least hazardous first, and that was the prison in the rock.
I had been carried to and from it blindfolded, but from what I had seen
from its windows I had formed a general idea as to where it lay. So I crept
back half-way towards the shell beach and then struck cautiously up towards
the tumbled masses of rock on the eastern side of the Island.
It was chancy work at best, with a possible stumble up against death at
every step. But life without Carette--worse still, life with Carette in
thrall to young Torode--would be worse to me than death, and so I take no
credit to myself for risking it for her. It was hers already, it did but
seek its own.
In daylight I could have gone almost straight to that cleft, steering my
course by the sea rocks I had noted from the window. But in the dark it was
different. I could only grope along in hope, with many a stop to wonder
where I had got to, and many a stumble and many a bruise. Stark darkness is
akin to blindness, and blindness in a strange land, and that a land of
rocks and chasms, is a vast perplexity. I wandered blindly and bruised
myself sorely, but suffered most from thought of the passing minutes, for
the minutes in which I might accomplish anything were numbered, and they
passed with no result.
I was half minded to give up search for the cleft, and steal down to the
houses and see what I could learn there. And yet I was drawn most strongly
to that cleft in the rock.
If only I could find it and satisfy myself!
My wandering thoughts and wandering body came to sudden and violent pause
at bottom of a chasm. I had stepped incautiously, and found myself a mass
of bruises on the rocks below. I felt sore all over, but I could stand and
I could stretch my arms, so no bones were broken.
I rubbed the sorest bruises into some approach to comfort, and wondered
where I had got to. I could feel rock walls on either side, and the rocks
below seemed roughly levelled. With a catch of the breath, which spelled a
mighty hope, I began to grope my way along, and found that the way sloped
up and down. I turned and groped up it. On, and on, and on, and at last I
brought up suddenly against iron bars, and knew where I was. And never,
sure, to any man was the feel of iron bars so grateful as was the touch of
these to me.
I shook them gently, but the gate was locked. I strained my ears for any
sound inside, strained them so that I heard the breaking of the waves on
the rock below the window at the other end of the rock chamber.
Then I cried softly, "Carette!"--and listened--and thought I heard a
movement.
"Carette!" I cried again.
And out of that blessed darkness, and the doubt and the bewilderment, came
the sweetest voice in all the world, in a scared whisper, as one doubtful
of her own senses--
"Who is it? Who calls?"
"It is I, Carette--Phil Carré;" and in a moment she was against the bars,
and my hands touched her and hers touched me.
"Phil!" she cried, in vast amazement, and clung tight to my hands to make
sure. "Is it possible? Oh, my dear, is it truly, truly you? I knew your
voice, but--I thought I dreamed, and then I thought it the voice of the
dead. You are not dead, Phil?" with a doubtful catch in her breath, as
though a doubt had caught her suddenly by the throat.
"But no! I am not dead, my dear one;" and I drew the dear little hands
through the bars and covered them with hot kisses.
"But how come you here, Phil? What brings you here?"
"You yourself, Carette. What else?"
"Bon Dieu, but it is good to hear you again, Phil! Can you get me out? They
carried me off this morning--"
"I know. I reached Sercq this morning, and Krok brought us the word an hour
later. I have been trying ever since to find where you were. I knew this
place, for I was prisoner here myself for many weeks."
"You, Phil?"
"Truly yes. This Torode is a murderer and worse. He fights under both
flags. He is Main Rouge in France and Torode of Herm. He slaughtered John
Ozanne and all our crew before my eyes, and why my life was spared I know
not."
"If he sees you he will kill you."
"Or I kill him."
"Phil, he will kill you. Oh, go!--go quick and rouse the Sercq men and
Peter Port. You need not fear for me. I will never wed with young
Torode--not if they kill me for it--"
And my heart was glad in spite of its heaviness and perplexity.
"When will they come to you again, Carette? And who is it comes?"
"A woman--madame, I suppose. She brought me my supper. I think they are
going away."
"Yes, they are going. They are going because I have come back alive, and
Torode knows the game is up if I get to Peter Port."
And that started her off again on that string, but I understood the tune of
it quite well.
"That is it," she urged. "Get across to Peter Port, Phil, and rouse them
there, and stop their going." But she only said it to get me away out of
danger, and I knew it.
"Peter Port can wait the news, and Torode can wait his dues. I am not going
till I take you with me, Carette."
"They will kill you!" she cried, and let go my hands to wring her own.
"Not if I can help it," I said stubbornly. "I want to live and I want you,
and God fights on the right side. If they do get you away, Carette,
remember that if I am alive I will follow you to the end of the world."
"They will kill you," she repeated.
"They are very busy loading the schooner. If the woman comes to you in the
morning I shall be able to get you out. My boat waits on the shell beach."
"You would do better to get round to Peter Port," she persisted.
"Torode would be off before they would be ready. If it was one man to
convince he would act, but where there are many time is wasted. I will see
you safe first and then see to Torode;" and seeing that I was fixed on
this, she urged my going no more.
She gave me her hands again through the bars and I kissed them, and kissed
them again and again, and would not let them go. That which lay just close
ahead of us was heavy with possibilities of separation and death, but I had
never tasted happiness so complete as I did through those iron bars. The
rusty bars could keep us apart, but they could not keep the pure hot love
that filled us from head to foot from thrilling through by way of our
clasped hands.
"Kiss me, Phil!" she said, of a sudden.
And I pressed my face into the rough bars, and could just touch her sweet
lips with mine.
"We may never come closer, dear," she said. "But if they kill you I will
follow soon, and--oh, it is good to feel you here!"
When the first wild joy of our uncovered hearts permitted us to speak of
other things, she had much to ask and I much to tell. I told her most of my
story, but said no word as yet of her brother Helier, for she had quite
enough to bear.
And, through all her askings, I could catch unconscious glimpses of the
faith and hope and love she had borne for me all through those weary
months. She had never believed me dead, she said, though John Ozanne and
all his men had long since been given up in Peter Port.
"Your mother and I hoped on, Phil, in spite of them all; for the world was
not all dark to us, and if you had been dead I think it would have been."
"And it was thought of you, Carette,--of you and my mother,--that kept my
heart up in the prison. It was weary work, but when I thought of you I felt
strong and hopeful."
"I am glad," she said simply. "We have helped one another."
"And we will do yet. I am going to get you out of this."
"The good God help you!"
When the night began to thin I told her I must go, though it would not be
out of hearing.
"Be ready the moment I open the gate," I said, "for every second will be of
consequence. Now, good-bye, dearest!" and we kissed once more through the
rusty bars, and I stole away.
The passage in the rock which led up to the gate was a continuation of the
natural cleft which formed the chamber. The slope of the rocks left the
gateway no more than eight or nine feet high, though, at the highest point
inside, the roof of the chamber was perhaps twenty feet above the floor.
The same slope continued outside, so that the side walls of the passage
were some eight or nine feet high, and fell almost straight to the rock
flooring. Both cleft and passage were made, I think, like the clefts and
caves on Sercq, by the decay of a softer vein of rock in the harder
granite, so leaving, in course of time, a straight cleavage, which among
the higher rocks formed the chamber, and on the lower slope formed the
passage up to it.
My very simple plan was to lie in wait, crouched flat upon the top wall of
the passage close to the gateway, and from there to spring down upon the
unsuspecting warder, whoever it might be--Torode, or his wife, or any
other. And by such unlooked-for attack I hoped to win the day, even though
it should be Torode himself who came. But I did not believe it would be
Torode, for he had his hands full down below, and Carette was to him only a
very secondary matter.
I half hoped it might be young Torode, for the hurling of my hatred on him
would have been grateful to me. But I thought it would be the mother, and
in that case, though I would use no more violence than might be necessary,
nothing should keep me from Carette.
I lay flat on the rough rock wall and waited. "Carette!" I whispered.
"Phil!"
"I am here just above you, dearest. When you hear them coming, be ready."
The thin darkness was becoming gray. In the sky up above, little clouds
were forming out of the shadows, and presently they were flecked with pink,
and all reached out towards the rising sun. The rocks below me began to
show their heads. It was desperately hard work waiting. I hungered
anxiously for someone to come and let me be doing.
What if they left her till the very last, and only came up, several of
them, to hurry her on board the schooner? The possibility of that chilled
me more than the morning dews. My face pinched with anxiety in accord with
my heart. I felt grim and hard and fit for desperate deeds.
And now it was quite light, and I could see across the lower slope of rocks
to St. Sampson's harbour and the flat lands beyond it.
Would they never come? Hell is surely an everlasting waiting for something
that never comes.
I was growing sick with anxiety when at last the blessed sound of footsteps
on the rocky path came to me, and in a moment I was Phil Carré again, and
Carette Le Marchant, the dearest and sweetest girl in all the world, was
locked behind iron bars just below me, and I was going to release her or
die for it.
But my heart gave a triumphant jump, and there was no need to think of
death, for the coming one was a woman, and she came up the ascent with bent
head and carried food in her hands.
I let her get right to the gate, then, from my knees, launched myself onto
her, and she went down against the bars in a heap, bruising her face badly.
But Carette was all my thought. Before the woman knew what had struck her,
I had her hands tied behind her with twisted strips of her own apron, and
had gagged her with a bunch of the same, and had the key in the lock, and
Carette was free.
The woman was dazed still with her fall. We bound her feet with a strip of
blanket and laid her on the bed, locked the gate again behind us, and sped
down the rocky way till a gap let us out into the open. Then swiftly among
the humps of rock, hand in hand, down the slope, towards the shell beach
where the boat lay. I had left it close under the last of the high ground,
and had drawn it well up out of reach of the tide, as I believed. But there
was no boat there. The beach lay shining in the sun, bare and white, and my
heart gave a jerk of dismay.
"There it is!" panted Carette, pointing the opposite way along the shore.
And there, among a tumbled heap of rocks, whose heads just showed above the
water, I saw my boat mopping and mowing at me in the grip of the tide.
I ran along to the nearest point on the beach, calling over my shoulder to
Carette, "If they come after you, take to the water; I will pick you
up,"--and dashed in, as we used to do in the olden days, till the water
tripped me up, and then swam my fastest for the boat, and thanked God that
swimming came so natural to me.
I had the boat back to the beach and Carette aboard within a few minutes,
and we each took an oar and pulled for Brecqhou with exultant hearts. We
thought our perils were past--and they were but just beginning.
For as we cleared the eastern point which juts out into the sea, and opened
Jethou and the dark channel between the two islands, our eyes lighted
together on a boat which was just about to turn the corner into the Herm
roadstead. Another minute and it would have been gone, and we should have
been free.
I stopped rowing and made to back in again out of sight, but it was not to
be. They sighted us at the same moment, and in an instant were tugging at
their oars to get their boat round, while we bent and pulled for our lives.
Fortunately for us, the tide was running swiftly between the islands, and
the time it took them to get round gave us a start. Moreover, their course,
till they got clear of the land, was set thick with perils, and they had to
go cautiously, while nothing but clear sea lay between us and Brecqhou.