CHAINED.
To ascend is easier than to go down. Judith was no longer alarmed.
There was danger still, that was inevitable; but the danger was as
nothing now to what it had been. It is one thing to descend in total
darkness into an abyss where one knows that below are sharp rocks, and
a drop of two hundred feet to a thundering, raging sea, racing up the
sand, pouring over the shelves of rock, foaming where divided waves
clash. When Judith had been on the beach in the afternoon the tide was
out; now it was flowing, and had swept over all that tract of white
sand and pebble where she had walked. She could not indeed now see the
water, but she heard the thud of a billow as it smote a rock, the boil
and the hiss of the waves and spray. To step downward, groping the
way, with a depth and a wild-throbbing sea beneath, demanded courage,
and courage of no mean order; but it was other to mount, to be able to
feel with the foot the ascent in the track, and to grope upward with
the hand from one point of clutch to another, to know that every step
upward was lessening the peril, and bringing nearer to the sward and
to safety.
Without great anxiety, therefore, Judith turned to climb. Cruel
Coppinger had allowed her to essay it unaided. Would he have done that
had he thought it involved danger, or, rather, serious danger? Judith
was sure he would not. His confidence that she could climb to the
summit unassisted made her confident. As she had descended she had
felt an interior qualm and sinking at every step she took; there was
no such sensation now as she mounted.
She was not much inconvenienced by the wind, for the wind was not
directly on shore; but it soughed about her, and eddies caught her
cloak and jerked it. It would have been better had she left her cloak
above on the turf. It incommoded her in her climb; it caught in the
prongs of rock.
The rain, the water running off the rock, had wet her shoes, soaked
them, and every step was in moisture that oozed out of them. She was
glad now to rest on her right hand. In descending, the left had felt
and held the rock, and it had been rubbed and cut. Probably it was
bleeding.
Surely there was a little more light in the sky where the sky showed
between the dense masses of vapor. Judith did not observe this, for
she did not look aloft; but she could see a steely tract of sea,
fretted into foam, reflecting an illumination from above, greater than
the twilight could cast. Then she remembered that there had been a
moon a few nights before, and thought that it was probably risen by
this time.
Something chill and wet brushed her face. It startled her for a
moment, and then she knew by the scent that it was a bunch of samphire
growing out of the side of the crag.
Shrill in her ear came the scream of a gull that rushed by in the
darkness, and she felt, or believed she felt, the fan from the wings.
Again it screamed, and near the ear it pierced her brain like an awl,
and then again, still nearer, unnerving her. In the darkness she
fancied that this gull was about to attack her with beak and claws,
and she put up her left arm as a protection to her eyes. Then there
broke out a jabber of sea-birds' voices, laughing mockingly, at a
little distance.
Whither had she got!
The way was no longer easy--one step before another--there was a break
of continuity in the path, if path the track could be called.
Judith stood still, and put forward her foot to test the rock in
front. There was no place where it could rest. Had she, bewildered by
that gull, diverged from the track? It would be well to retreat a few
steps. She endeavored to do this, and found that she encountered a
difficulty in finding the place where she had just planted her foot.
It was but too certain that she was off the track line. How to recover
it she knew not. With the utmost difficulty she did reach a point in
her rear where she could stand, clinging to the rock; but she clung
now with both hands. There was no tuft of samphire to brush her face
as she descended. She must have got wrong before she touched that. But
where was the samphire? She cautiously felt along the surface of the
crag in quest of it, but could not find it. There was, however, a
little above her shoulder, a something that felt like a ledge, and
which might be the track. If she had incautiously crept forward at a
level without ascending rapidly enough, she was probably below the
track. Could she climb to this point--climb up the bare rock, with
sheer precipice below her? And, supposing that the shelf she felt with
her hand were not the track, could she descend again to the place
where she had been?
Her brain spun. She lost all notion as to where she might be--perhaps
she was below the path, perhaps she was above it. She could not tell.
She stood with arms extended, clinging to the rock, and her heart beat
in bounds against the flinty surface. The clasp of her cloak was
pressing on her throat, and strangling her. The wind had caught the
garment, and was playing with the folds, carrying it out and flapping
it behind her over the gulf. It was irksome; it was a danger to her.
She cautiously slid one hand to her neck, unhasped the mantle, and it
was snatched from her shoulders and carried away. She was lighter
without it, could move with greater facility; cold she was not, wet
she might become, but what mattered that if she could reach the top of
the cliff?
Not only on her own account was Judith alarmed. She had undertaken a
commission. She had promised to bear a message to her aunt from
Coppinger that concerned the safety of his men. What the signal meant
she did not know, but suspected that it conveyed a message of danger.
She placed both her hands on the ledge, and felt with her knee for
some point on which to rest it, to assist her in lifting herself from
where she stood to the higher elevation. There was a small projection,
and after a moment's hesitation she drew her foot from the shelf
whereon it had rested and leaned the left knee on this hunch. Then she
clung with both hands, and with them and her knee endeavored to heave
herself up about four feet, that is, to the height of her shoulders. A
convulsive quiver seized on her muscles. She was sustained by a knee
and her hands only. If they gave way she could not trust to recover
her previous lodgement place. One desperate strain, and she was on the
ledge, on both knees, and was feeling with her hands to ascertain if
she had found the track. Her fingers touched thrift and passed over
turf. She had not reached what she sought. She was probably farther
from it than before. As all her members were quivering after the
effort, she seated herself on the shelf she had reached, leaned back
against the wet rock, and waited till her racing pulses had recovered
evenness of flow, and her muscles had overcome the first effects of
their tension.
Her position was desperate. Rain and perspiration mingled dripped from
her brow, ran over and blinded her eyes. Her breath came in sobs
between her parted lips. Her ears were full of the booming of the
surge far below, and the scarcely less noisy throb of her blood in her
pulses.
When she had started on her adventurous expedition she had seen some
stars that had twinkled down on her, and had appeared to encourage
her. Now, not a star was visible, only, far off on the sea, a wan
light that fell through a rent in the black canopy over an angry deep.
Beyond that all was darkness, between her and that all was darkness.
As she recovered her self-possession, with the abatement of the tumult
in her blood she was able to review her position, and calculate her
chances of escape from it.
Up the track from the cave the smugglers would almost certainly
escape, because that was the only way, unwatched, by which they could
leave the beach without falling into the hands of the Preventive men.
If they came by the path--that path could not be far off, though in
which direction it lay she could not guess. She would call, and then
Coppinger or some of his men would come to her assistance.
By this means alone could she escape. There was nothing for her to do
but to wait.
She bent forward and looked down. She might have been looking into a
well; but a little way out she could see, or imagine she saw, the
white fringes of surf stealing in. There was not sufficient light for
her to be certain whether she really saw foam, or whether her fancy,
excited by the thunder of the tide, made her suppose she saw it.
The shelf she occupied was narrow and inclined; if she slipped from it
she could not trust to maintain herself on the lower shelf, certainly
not if she slid down in a condition of unconsciousness. And now
reaction after the strain was setting in, and she feared lest she
might faint. In her pocket was the dog-chain that had caught her foot.
She extracted that now, and groping along the wall of rock behind her,
caught a stout tuft of coarse heather, wiry, well rooted; and she took
the little steel chain and wound it about the branches and stem of the
plant, and also about her wrist--her right wrist--so as to fasten her
to the wall. That was some relief to her to know that in the event of
her dropping out of consciousness there was something to hold her up,
though that was only the stem of an erica, and her whole weight would
rest on its rootlets. Would they suffice to sustain her? It was
doubtful; but there was nothing else on which she could depend.
Suddenly a stone whizzed past, struck the ledge, and rebounded. Then
came a shower of earth and pebbles. They did not touch her, but she
heard them clatter down.
Surely they had been displaced by a foot, and that a foot passing
above.
Then she heard a shot--also overhead, and a cry. She looked aloft, and
saw against the half-translucent vapors a black struggling figure on
the edge of the cliff. She saw it but for an instant, and then was
struck on the face by an open hand, and a body crashed on to the shelf
at her side, rolled over the edge, and plunged into the gulf below.
She tried to cry, but her voice failed her. She felt her cheek stung
by the blow she had received. A feeling as though all the rock were
sinking under her came on, as though she were sliding--not
shooting--but sliding down, down, and the sky went up higher,
higher--and she knew no more.