A TALE OF TWO TUNNELS
NOVELS, ETC., BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each; post 8vo., illustrated boards,
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ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE.
IN THE MIDDLE WATCH.
ON THE FO'K'SLE HEAD.
A VOYAGE TO THE CAPE.
A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
THE MYSTERY OF THE 'OCEAN STAR.'
THE ROMANCE OF JENNY HARLOWE.
AN OCEAN TRAGEDY.
MY SHIPMATE LOUISE.
ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA.
THE GOOD SHIP 'MOHOCK.'
THE PHANTOM DEATH.
IS HE THE MAN?
THE CONVICT SHIP.
HEART OF OAK.
THE TALE OF THE TEN.
THE LAST ENTRY.
A TALE OF TWO TUNNELS. Crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d.
THE SHIP: HER STORY. With 50 illustrations by H. C. SEPPINGS WRIGHT.
Small 4to., cloth, gilt top, 6s.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C.
A TALE OF TWO TUNNELS
A ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN WATERS
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF 'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,' 'THE CONVICT SHIP,' ETC.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A NEW EDITION
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1899
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE DEVIL'S WALK 1
II. CAPTAIN JACKMAN 31
III. THE DINNER 63
IV. THE PROPOSAL 93
V. BUGSBY'S HOLE 124
VI. FATHER AND DAUGHTER 158
A TALE OF TWO TUNNELS
CHAPTER I.
THE DEVIL'S WALK.
The ship _Lovelace_ lay in the East India Docks, being newly arrived
from an East India voyage. Her commander, Jackman, stood in her cabin
and gazed in his glass; he looked at his face, and seemed to study it.
There was a mark as of a blow close under the left eye, and he examined
this mark with care.
He was a handsome man, with regular features and a dark brown skin. His
eyes were black and flashing, and, contrary to the custom of that age,
he wore his hair close cropped behind. Being satisfied, he picked up a
bag, locked a drawer, quitted his cabin, withdrew the key, and left the
ship.
He made his way on foot and by coach to Cannon Street, where the offices
of the owners of the vessel were situated. Just when he was in the
middle of the thoroughfare he was knocked down and his bag taken from
him. He lay stunned for some moments, and, when he sprang to his feet,
he caught sight of the darting figure of a man flinging the bag into
some wide area and rushing on.
Captain Jackman gave chase, but did not somehow think of recovering his
bag. Then, feeling confused and amazingly shocked by this theft of
fifteen hundred pounds in gold and paper--mostly in gold--the money of
the owners, he gave up, and walked sullenly, without even thinking of
brushing his clothes, towards the offices.
Such was the story related to the owners by Captain Jackman of the ship
_Lovelace_. He said he believed his assailant was a rascally little
seaman whom he had shipped at Calcutta, and who had given him trouble
all the way home.
Did Captain Jackman see the man?
Yes. Just outline enough of the flying figure to guess that it was he.
How was the money done up?
In three small bags.
Would he have had time to take these parcels out of the captain's bag in
the narrow compass of time allotted him by the narrative?
Certainly. He had himself seen the sailor fling the bag down the area.
Sailors are swift in breaking bulk. Some are born thieves. This sailor
was peculiarly active, and was the one of the whole crew, knowing that
Captain Jackman was going to carry a large sum of gold ashore, to rob
him out of hand.
'How did he know that you were going to carry a large sum of gold
ashore?'
'It may have leaked out through my servant, who, being a neat hand,
packed the money for me.'
They went to the police. They searched the area, and found the bag, but
they did not find the gold. What, then, was to be done? Raise a hue and
cry?
Captain Jackman was grimly regarded by his owners, who had lost in
Cannon Street a very handsome venture in their voyage.
'I hope,' said the captain, when he called at the office two days after
the incident, 'that this will not make any difference in our relations,
gentlemen.'
'You shall hear from us, sir,' answered one of the owners, a tall lean
man with a dangling eyeglass, bending his form crane-like towards
Jackman. The captain seemed to pause, to look confused and pained. He
then, with a polite bow, raised his cap and left the place.
'I noticed a rather ugly mark near his eye,' said one of the partners.
'Ay,' said the other, 'and plenty of dust in his clothes.'
One day, some mornings after this, a fine young woman was pacing the
sands of the sea-shore, lost in thought. The sands formed a noble
stretch of promenade, brown and beautiful with ripples moulded by the
waters of the sea. But from the wash of the surf the brine was sparkling
and flashing: it was blowing half a gale. The tall, mid-Channel combers
raced inshore, following one another like cliffs looking over cliffs.
The girl's dress to windward blew to her figure, and showed her a beauty
in shape: sometimes she paused, and turned to look at the sea, which
swept into hilly heights of froth and obscured the horizon by miles of
dazzle. Also, she took notice of a little barque staggering down Channel
under close-reefed sail, sometimes vanishing, and then showing her whole
shape. The sight was so toy-like, it made one linger. All the wet
glories which came out of the sea with that little leaning, flying
fabric glowed in each sparkling sunbeam that touched her. She was
quaint, too, as an example of a vanished type of ship, though she
belonged to her age. She was very high in the stern--a pink--and her
bowsprit ran up like a mast. Her topsails, when set, would have a
curiously lofty hoist for a vessel of her size. Such as she was, there
she was, all of the olden time, spinning through the blue marrow of the
Channel, and making for some far western port.
All on the left of the young lady rose a towering terrace of cliff,
white and gray blocks, seared, ravaged, scowling, menacing the up-looker
with the headlong threat of its topmost reefs. It went for miles. At
some distance its curvature frames what is now a well-known
watering-place.
The narrative must stop an instant to describe the young lady. Who is
this girl that is walking solitary along the sands under a great height
of cliff before the midday dinner-hour? She shall be introduced at once
as Ada Conway, the daughter of Commander Conway, R.N., a gentleman of
spirit, who had seen service, who lived in a comfortable little house
out of eyeshot of the wash of ebb-tide. She was a tall girl, above the
middle stature, of mould in absolute proportion. She had thick black
hair. She was Eastern in her colour and eyes, yet had as fine a type of
English face as you could wish to see. She was dressed somewhat quaintly
in a sort of turban hat, with a short ornament of feather or bird's wing
buckled to it by a fal-lal in gold. Her dress was of green material, and
was cut so short-waisted as to reach nearly under her arms, where it
was clasped in a girdle. This early century beauty blew along athwart
the shrill gale and over the ribbed brown sand. And sometimes she looked
at the leaning barque, and sometimes she stopped in earnest to take in
the whole sumptuous mass of mountainous breaker, lifting into Atlantic
height, before falling with the dead crash of the defeated billow.
Suddenly her ear was caught by a sound proceeding from the direction of
the cliff. It did not come from the base; it did not come from the
summit; but, womanlike, she must needs look along both. She was passing
on, when the same strange, alarming cry stopped her, and now she had the
good sense to scan the front of the cliff, where might-be she should see
a man hanging by his eyelids to the edge of a rock, or some helpless boy
in a hollow, lowered thence by a bowline, and lost to recovery by his
friends.
The terrace of cliff was a vast expanse of holes and fissures--great
crevices of the size of gaps; it buttressed out in parts with natural
effect, was solid and green at its base, and was a noble example of an
English seaboard. Miss Conway directed her eyes over the face of the
cliff very carefully, studiously, as of purpose, under her shaded hand,
missing the hole from which the voice was proceeding. She then, with a
start, beheld a part of the figure of a man standing in a hollow of the
cliff, well known to her, as a young lady residing in those parts, as
the orifice of a smuggler's tunnel called the Devil's Walk.
She saw him wave a handkerchief. She pulled out hers and waved it in
return, running a little way towards the base of the cliff, and
shrieking--
'I know where you have got fixed. I will release you!'
The wind carried her high and powerful notes. The man in the hole
flourished his arm with the most cordial, grateful gesticulation, and
the young lady walked swiftly towards the little town which lay in an
embrasure in the great cliff on her right.
The road was steep, wide, and formed an angle. It went like a steeple
into the sky. People often paused to admire the gulls floating round
about and in and out the liquid blue of this fanciful aerial spire.
Nothing of the town was visible till almost the summit of the great gap
had been reached, when there began to steal upon the sight a row of
little houses built of flint, further off a church, then again a
pleasant little rectory-house. Houses broke the landscape, which had few
trees, and was hilly only in the distance. It was a sort of town that
seemed to have settled down to nothing and to seem nothing. It gave
itself no airs; all was chaste and sober--of a Quaker-like trimness of
aspect. In a small garden, distant by about a mile from the bulk of the
town, stood a cottage of two stories, square and strong for the gales.
It was Commander Conway's home, and the home of his daughter Ada. The
girl went swiftly along the edge of the cliff, this time towards the
right. She had come about a mile along the sands; she had now to retrace
her steps on top. It was not very strange that she should know exactly
where the man was imprisoned. She had lived many years in those parts,
and knew most of the traditions of the smugglers, and had grown
acquainted with their haunts, and had visited them, through talking with
old sailors to whom times were always hard. How distant the rolling blue
sea seemed all that way off! A full-rigged ship was then in sight,
looking close in; she rolled in the noblest majesty the deep can clothe
her toys with.
But Ada had no eyes for pictures of the sea or sky, for processions of
clouds, nor ear for the gull screeching in its soft white plenty midway
high, nor for the breaker arching like glass to the sand. Not just then,
anyhow. She struck a path, and walked with vigour about a mile,
deviating into a part of the land, about a third of a mile from the
brink of the cliff.
She arrived at a strange old enclosure. It might have been some ancient
smuggler's vault, the memorial gone, nothing but the flat tombstone and
the square of broken neglected railings left. She squeezed through these
broken railings, and approached the small flat stone, which was fitted
with a ring in the middle; but this she had known for years. Not a
living creature was in sight, not even a goat. That vast down of cliff
swelled its rampart without visible figure of man to the distant hills.
It seemed a desolate scene even now. One might figure it with some sense
of horror in a gale of wind black with snow, so dark that if you did not
mind, the next step might carry you into the scaling hiss that was
washing, bubbling, fretting, trumpeting into breakers just below.
Miss Conway seized the ring and raised it, not without exerting
considerable strength. She had often raised that stone cover, and now,
when she had got it off, she knew what to do. It was, in short, the
entrance to a smuggler's passage, designed for the lifting of goods from
a height. It had been abandoned, not, however, before it had been
formed, nor before a whole wheel of like corridors had radiated out of
this mainspring under the earth. All were of no use, and had been
deserted by the smugglers as worthless. Few took much trouble to wander
in those cold caves. They felt tolerably certain that bold Bill and
Harry Spikem had not left anything worth their acceptance in those
gloomy depths. Boatmen offered to conduct visitors through them for
sixpence; but a visitor was an extremely rare bird at a town where there
were no lodgings to be had, and but two small inns of those old days for
the traveller to put up at--inns such as Nelson sat in with Collingwood
and his wife in a little room, whilst little Miss Collingwood watched
the dog playing.
The stone being lifted, Miss Conway peered down and called. She peered
down and shrieked. The echoes of her voice seemed to flash like light,
so piercing were her tones. But under earth the voice is very deceptive,
as you shall know if you hail a man from a depth of soil.
Why couldn't he have come to the place where he entered? she thought;
and then she reflected that he might have strayed in one of the
corridors, and have got to the end of it, and was there standing,
thinking the entrance was over his head, and waiting with a beating
heart for his release. For certain it was there was no release for the
man save through the smuggler's exit.
If that was his luck in those branching corridors, he would have been
well off had he fallen and been caught by some projection of rock; for
then they could have seen him above; they could have lowered tackles and
a bowline; they could more clearly have heard his shouts. Now he could
not approach the seaward-facing hole so as even to show himself to those
down-looking.
A flight of four rude steps sank into the gloom, and the cutting went
away in blackness. She had a great deal of pluck in her veins; only a
plucky woman, single-handed, would have ventured this rescue. It was no
longer now like opening a trap-door and letting a man out; it was
seeking for a captive in blinding blackness, save where the orifice in
the cliff let in at its mouth of tunnel, at a distance, a green light
like the object-glass of a telescope at evening.
It was clear that some officious hand must have closed this trap-door
above on observing it opened, supposing it so by neglect; for the
people of the place, though they got no money by the thing, rather
valued themselves upon it as a small sight, though there were scores of
greater wonders, east and west, particularly west, much of the same
kind. Ada walked a little distance, until she was plunged in darkness;
she then stood and shouted--
'Where are you?'
No answer was returned. Some faint sheen from the trap-door lay just
here, and a little further onwards, and you could have distinguished the
marks of the axe in the solid stuff the dare-devils had sheered through
till they came to the open. The labour was wonderful because it had been
secret, it had been done in passages of blackness in long nights, with
look-outs to silence the axe and hands striking fiercely, by small
lantern light, against the portion they had opened by a line ruled
straight by magnetic compass.
But Miss Conway knew that the smugglers had run a number of tunnels,
besides this long corridor, on either hand of it, extending like the
antennæ of an aquatic insect. If the man had wandered into one of them,
then, after she had cried aloud in vain to and from the central passage,
she must return for help and lights, and make a proper search.
She walked on, again paused, shrieking in her singing, ringing voice--
'Who are you who have been caught down here?'
This, however, did not last long. She had neared the orifice overlooking
the sea--close to, it glowed like a lamp in the cliff side--when her cry
was echoed in a loud note, and a man's shape stood between her and the
light.
'Oh, there you are!' shouted the girl, greatly relieved. 'I was afraid
you had got lost in one of the off avenues.'
'You are extremely kind to come to my help,' he exclaimed, approaching
her.
She could clearly see the movements of his shape against the disc that
shone behind him.
'I don't know what I should have done. I don't know how long I've been
locked up. I am very hungry, and could drink a gallon of beer. Was not
I an idiot to come into this place?'
'I think you were,' she said. 'Did you pull the stone up?'
'Yes,' he answered, 'and some villain seeing me descend must have
sneaked to the pit and put the stone on, for when I returned, making
sure of my exit by that lighted hole yonder, lo! there was no light; all
was blackness. I was without a stick, without means to knock upon it.
Good heavens! what was I to do? There was only one way out, and that was
over the cliff, about eighty feet of fall, as I took it.'
'What brought you here?'
'Curiosity, and,' said he, laughing, 'an inborn love of booty. I had
read in my time a great deal of the old smugglers--of their shifts and
ways--and knew that this and the adjacent coast contained many of their
caves. I got a plan of this one from a man in your town, and entered it
with a candle, and explored by candlelight; but the candle burnt out
long ago. Idiot-like, I dreamt of run goods neglected, of hard specie in
canvas, and tobacco in wood.'
'You never find such things,' said the girl, 'in our caves--the men
were too cunning. They did not work for you or for me.'
'Pray what time is it?'
'About noon.'
'Lord! then I have been here since four o'clock yesterday afternoon!'
'It is time we got out,' she exclaimed. 'Did never a man pass below in
so many hours?'
'Two shrimpers only did I see far out--aged, bowed shapes; and I could
not have made myself heard.'
'Now hook your hand into this pleat,' said she, taking his hand and
fixing his finger for him.
They walked in darkness. It never will be known how it happened--whether
Miss Conway had, in that moment of excitement, failed to take a glance
at the wall-star at the end, and turned with her companion into one of
the long out-leading corridors, or whether she had absolutely forgotten
her geography of the place in the blackness that was upon them, for she
had never contemplated passing more than a few steps beyond the
entrance to the cave. She grew sensible of her blunder when they arrived
at the extremity of the cutting, which had, doubtless, other avenues
forking out of it.
'I believe,' she cried, in a low voice, 'I have mistaken our cell.'
'In the name of mercy don't call it a cell!' he exclaimed, with the very
presence of a shudder in his speech. 'In the long hours that I have been
haunting these holes like a worm I have seen sights, and I have heard
sounds, and amongst the sounds I heard was the faint, everlasting crying
of the dead for those they loved, passing through the earth.'
'This is no place for such talk,' she exclaimed, baffled by the
blindness of the cave.
They returned, still linked, but somewhat ironically. It seemed certain
now that they took a turning to the left, for they missed the star, and
came against the blank wall of the cliff, as they supposed. Strong of
heart as was the girl, she was beginning to grow frightened; nor was
there any consolation to be found in the idea of her having a companion
and a protector. Who was he? Well, so far as his utterance could
pronounce him, he was a gentleman, gatherable from his speech, of a
somewhat heedless cast of mind; but how he looked, how he was dressed,
how tall he was, whether he was black, brown, or white, she knew no more
than whither the rest of these caves tended. She said--
'How long do you think I have been down here?'
'I should say half an hour,' he answered.
'You mean ten minutes,' she cried.
'Well, time lengthens itself whilst we stop in this place,' he
exclaimed. 'If we have missed the avenue leading to the exit, we may go
hunting endlessly through corridors for it.'
'No,' she exclaimed passionately. 'If I can see the daylight in the end,
I shall know where I am.'
They walked, and they continued to walk. Ada's heart turned cold with
horror. She had no true conception of the ramifications of these
remarkable caves, and did not know but that there might be wells and
desperate pits many feet deep sunk in some of the windings. They all, no
doubt, had their hatchways or exits, long since buried under the sands
of time. Evidently it was a great company of smugglers who had fashioned
this Devil's Walk.
'Where are we going?' said the man, stopping; and Ada Conway stopped.
'I sha'n't know until I see the light in the passage where I met you.'
'The mischief is,' cried the man, 'that we may be walking yoked round
and round endlessly, without ever coming to either light. Good God, what
a horrible issue to this adventure! Nobody ever visits this place, I
suppose?'
'Only you,' said she; 'and it's my business to save you.'
'How sorry I am that you should be here I can't say, yet it is natural
to want to get out.'
'But it seems so mad to come into this smuggler's hole with a dream of
booty, with no further provision than a candle; and it is wonderful that
you should not know by that same light that you had been entombed, and
spent a whole night underground!'
'Time flies and time loiters under wild conditions. I can tell you that,
for I'm a sailor.'
'Are you?' she ejaculated. 'What rating?'
'I lately commanded a merchantman. I have lain awake all night sick in
hospital, and have heard the quarters and halves strike with the
rapidity of chimes. I could not have sworn that three hours have passed.
I shall _look_ the time, I suspect, when I get out. I am beginning to
feel a bit weary of this blackness, and long for that one round of light
that offered me a leap as an escape.'
As he spoke these words they made a step, and lo! on their left, at the
extremity of the passage, glowed, within fifty feet, the cheery star of
day.
'Hurrah!' shouted the man.
The girl, in a single sob, unheard by her companion, expressed her
pent-up feelings.
'Yes, there's the port-hole right enough,' said the man. 'Now you know
the way.'
'Come along straight,' she said.
She led him as before, and touching the wall, made a true course for
the opening. But as she advanced she grew very uneasy on observing that
no light fell through the hatch-hole, and that the short flight of steps
was not visible in any definition of colour. Her companion, stumbling
slowly alongside of her, presently noticed this.
'How did you get in?' said he.
'By a trap which I left open.'
'It isn't night again, I hope,' said he, with a ghastly laugh.
'I see no light,' she answered, 'and this is the corridor of the
entrance. Oh, my God! I fear some meddlesome wretch, whilst I've been
talking to you, instead of hastening above, has shut us down.'
'So that we can't get out?'
'Not from within.'
'Well,' said he, after a pause, and with a tone of courage in his voice,
'what we've got to do is to go to that light-hole yonder and wait for
something to pass, and make our case known. Somebody is sure to pass.'
'Let me see if I can feel the steps with my foot,' said the girl. 'But
hold on to me.'
He had brought out a large metal tinder-box--but empty; and in his fit
of distraction let it fall. She shrieked as if she had been stung. The
nerves of even stout-hearted girls soon yield to blackness, to the
association of strange invisible men, and to the probability of a
frightful fate. He laughed to encourage her, said what the thing was,
and groped and picked it up. She took him to the steps, felt with her
foot, and said, 'Feel for yourself. The trap-door is immediately
overhead.'
'Well, if we mean to preserve our lives,' said the man--'and God knows
how sorry I am that you should be here sharing my imbecile fate--we must
walk to that round hole yonder, and keep a smart look-out on the sands
below. But I'll try first if this stone can be lifted by shoving.'
He left her and got upon the short set of steps, and strained with his
hands. He could not bring his shoulder to bear. In vain. He toiled and
groaned. He came down, and feeling for her, said, 'No; the sight-seers
have made it easy from above; but it is not easy to thrust up from
under, and if I were twenty men I could not do it with my hands in that
narrow circumference.'
'Let's walk to that hole,' said the girl, hooking him. 'It is our only
chance.'
'Another sight-seer may descend,' said he.
'Few dream of booty in this age,' she answered. 'It is pretty well
known,' she continued, 'that all are dry bones here.'
They gained the orifice. It framed a noble picture of Channel ocean
afternoon. The seas ridged in glittering ranks, smoke burst from their
curtseying heads, and they raced in groans upon the hidden beach
beneath, whitening out back to half a mile of foam. Ships were in sight,
blowing upwards, blowing downwards, rendered somewhat prismatic in the
airy lens of that smuggler's window. The tide was making fast, and they
could see nothing but white water.
'Look at that,' cried the man, pointing down.
The shuddering girl drew a foot or two closer, and peered below. 'There
is no escape!' she exclaimed.
Now they looked at each other. The girl has been described. The man was
the sailorly-looking fellow you would expect to see in him, after his
confession of his calling. The light shone very well here, and sank for
a distance of twenty or thirty feet into the gloom, then went out in
utter suddenness into black blankness. Miss Conway saw standing beside
her a man of about thirty years of age. He was dressed in the style of
the day when Peace had newly lighted on the land, when the billows of
our home waters were no longer vexed by the keels of contending
cruisers, nor by their thunder. He was decidedly handsome. Hair cut
short behind. He had lost his hat, and she could see that his hair in
front was bushy and plentiful, coming over the forehead in the 'fine'
style of that age. He had very striking features, but they looked ashen
and sunken now. He bowed to the young lady when their gaze met, and
said, raising his hand--
'You perceive I have lost my hat.'
'We will not seek it,' she exclaimed.
He was dressed in a dark green cloth coat, a coloured waistcoat and
metal buttons. He was covered with dust, had scratched himself on the
hands and face, and could not have looked in a more sorry plight had he
been newly enlarged after a week's imprisonment in the great Pyramid.
'Do no persons but you ever walk along these sands when they are bare?'
said the man.
'At long intervals,' said she, finding some faint reassurance in his
presence and in the light. 'A boatman or a stranger in the place might
stroll as far as this from the town. The tide is ugly, and it makes
fast.'
'At that rate we are entombed, and must die in the full sight of life,'
cried the man, leaning against the wall, and folding his arms with a
scowl. 'It is bad enough that I should be here, cursed idiot that I am!
But that I should have drawn you into a living grave!'
'I desire you will act as a man,' she interrupted passionately. 'We must
husband our strength and preserve our voices. In to-day or in
to-morrow'--but her tones failed her as she spoke--'a man may pass
within reach of our voice, and learning who I am, deliver us.'
He gazed at her with a sudden admiration. She certainly made a noble
heroic figure as she stood viewing him in that strange tunnel-like
light, bright on the left, in gloom on the right. Her eyes sparkled. She
looked down the corridor where the steps lay, then sat down, placing her
back against the wall. It was clear that an under-dread possessed her,
but not so as to master her. The thought of being locked down with a
strange man in a lonely cavern for an afternoon and night--and for how
much longer, who could tell?--was horrible; it kept her soul shuddering,
so to speak. But the man's own consternation was too excessive to take
notice of anything but this: that he was entombed in a smugglers' cave
where, as things stood, there was every chance of their leaving their
bones. He squatted in a most disconsolate posture opposite to her, and
they both had the light on them.
'This,' said the man, meaning the light, 'is worth something, anyhow.'
'Continual darkness is frightful,' she answered; 'it drives men mad.'
'Who the deuce could figure that those sands would be covered at
flood?' he cried. 'What an enormous waste they offer when the water is
low!'
'You must have slept, otherwise you would surely know that you had
already spent a night in this place.'
'When I found I couldn't get out,' he answered, 'I took to wandering in
the darkness, and lost the light, and losing that, lost this corridor. I
turned and plied and groped, and then my candle being burnt out, I sat
down as I now sit, and I have no doubt I slept. I awoke, and began to
grope my way along again, and after a long time my hands brought me to
some entrance just down yonder, clear into the view of this orifice.'
'Was it daylight?' she asked.
'Bright.'
'When you get out,' said she, smiling faintly, 'you will have had enough
of the Devil's Walk.'
'I shall thank God for my escape, madam,' cried he, with real fervour,
'if it is only for your preservation. May I venture to ask the name of
the good and heroic lady who has come at the risk of her life to
release a man from a living tomb?'
'My name is Ada Conway,' she answered.
He stood up and made her a low bow.
'My father is Commander Conway, late of the Royal Navy--what he will
think--what he will fear--the fruitless searches he will be making--I am
his only child--he will suppose I have been overtaken by the tide and
drowned. Yet they should still be looking for me there,' she exclaimed,
gazing out to sea.
'No, madam, they wouldn't creep in the surf,' said he; 'they'd watch for
the breakers to strand you. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Captain
Jackman, late of the ship _Lovelace_, which arrived home a week or two
ago. I left her, and having heard much of these parts, thought I would
make a cruise to your neighbourhood, and a pretty cruise it has been.'
'Are you an American?' she asked.
'No. I am supposed to descend from a good old English family.'
'You have had no food since yesterday?'
'Not a pinch of biscuit.'
'Well, God must help us out. He must help us out, for it is too, _too_
awful,' she cried, burying her face.
'If people don't pass to-day, they will come along to-morrow,' said
Captain Jackman; 'and I have got the voice of a lion.' Saying which, he
stood up and sent 'Ship ahoy! For God's sake, help us,' slinging in
ringing echoes across the troubled breast of the sea.
'Ay!' she exclaimed; 'but think what must pass between now and
to-morrow.' She looked at her watch. 'Do you know the time?' she
inquired.
'By the light in the west, I should say it is not far from six,' he
answered.
'It is six,' she said, replacing her watch, 'and we have the night
before us.'
'It must be borne,' said the man, with a note of sulky sympathy,
clasping his knees, and fixing his eyes upon the sea.