ON THE SHINGLE.
The smugglers, warned by Coppinger, had crept up the path in silence,
and singly, at considerable intervals between each, and on reaching
the summit of the cliffs had dispersed to their own homes, using the
precaution to strike inland first, over the "new-take" wall.
As the last of the party reached the top he encountered one of the
coast-guards, who, by the orders of his superior, was patrolling the
down to watch that the smugglers did not leave the cove by any other
path than the one known--that up and down which donkeys were driven.
This donkey-driving to the beach was not pursued solely for the sake
of contraband; the beasts brought up loads of sand, which the farmers
professed they found valuable as manure on their stiff soil, and also
the masses of seaweed cast on the strand after a gale, and which was
considered to be possessed of rare fertilizing qualities.
No sooner did the coast-guard see a man ascend the cliff, or rather
come up over the edge before him, than he fired his pistol to give the
signal to his fellows, whereupon the smuggler turned, seized him by
the throat, and precipitated him over the edge.
Of this Coppinger knew nothing. He had led the procession, and had
made his way to Pentyre Glaze by a roundabout route, so as to evade a
guard set to watch for him approaching from the cliffs, should one
have been so planted.
On reaching his door, his first query was whether the signals had been
made.
"What signals?" asked Miss Trevisa.
"I sent a messenger here with instructions."
"No messenger has been here."
"What, no one--not--" he hesitated, and said, "not a woman?"
"Not a soul has been here--man, woman, or child--since you left."
"No one to see you?"
"No one at all, Captain."
Coppinger did not remove his hat; he stood in the doorway biting his
thumb. Was it possible that Judith had shrunk from coming to his house
to bear the message? Yet she had promised to do so. Had she been
intercepted by the Preventive men? Had--had she reached the top of the
cliff? Had she, after reaching the top, lost her way in the dark,
taken a false direction, and--Coppinger did not allow the thought to
find full expression in his brain. He turned, without another word,
and hastened to the cottage of Mr. Menaida. He must ascertain whether
she had reached home.
Uncle Zachie had not retired to bed; Scantlebray had been gone an
hour; Zachie had drunk with Scantlebray, and he had drunk after the
departure of that individual to indemnify himself for the loss of his
company. Consequently Mr. Menaida was confused in mind and thick in
talk.
"Where is Judith?" asked Coppinger, bursting in on him.
"In bed, I suppose," answered Uncle Zachie, after a while, when he
comprehended the question, and had had time to get over his surprise
at seeing the Captain.
"Are you sure? When did she come in?"
"Come in?" said the old man, scratching his forehead with his pipe.
"Come in--bless you, I don't know; some time in the afternoon. Yes, to
be sure it was, some time in the afternoon."
"But she has been out to-night?"
"No--no--no," said Uncle Zachie, "it was Scantlebray."
"I say she has--she has been to--" he paused, then said--"to see her
aunt."
"Aunt Dunes! bless my heart, when?"
"To-night."
"Impossible!"
"But I say she has. Come, Mr. Menaida. Go up to her room, knock at the
door, and ascertain if she be back. Her aunt is alarmed--there are
rough folks about."
"Why, bless me!" exclaimed Mr. Menaida, "so there are. And--well,
wonders'll never cease. How came you here! I thought the guard were
after you. Scantlebray said so."
"Will you go at once and see if Judith Trevisa is home?"
Coppinger spoke with such vehemence, and looked so threateningly at
the old man, that he staggered out of his chair, and, still holding
his pipe, went to the stairs.
"Bless me!" said he, "whatever am I about? I've forgot a candle. Would
you oblige me with lighting one? My hand shakes, and I might light my
fingers by mistake."
After what seemed to Coppinger to be an intolerable length of time,
Uncle Zachie stumbled down the stairs again.
"I say," said Mr. Menaida, standing on the steps, "Captain--did you
ever hear about Tincombe Lane?--
'Tincombe Lane is all up-hill,
Or down hill, as you take it;
You tumble up and crack your crown,
Or tumble down and break it.'
--It's the same with these blessed stairs. Would you mind lending me a
hand? By the powers, the banister is not firm! Do you know how it goes
on?--
'Tincombe Lane is crooked and straight
As pot-hook or as arrow.
'Tis smooth to foot, 'tis full of rut,
'Tis wide and then 'tis narrow.'
--Thank you, sir, thank you. Now take the candle. Bah! I've broke my
pipe--and then comes the moral--
'Tincombe Lane is just like life
From when you leave your mother,
'Tis sometimes this, 'tis sometimes that,
'Tis one thing or the other.'"
In vain had Coppinger endeavored to interrupt the flow of words, and
to extract from thick Zachie the information he needed, till the old
gentleman was back in his chair.
Then Uncle Zachie observed--"Blessy'--I said so--I said so a thousand
times. No--she's not there. Tell Aunt Dunes so. Will you sit down and
have a drop? The night is rough, and it will do you good--take the
chill out of your stomach and the damp out of your chest."
But Coppinger did not wait to decline the offer. He turned at once,
left the house, and dashed the door back as he stepped out into the
night. He had not gone a hundred paces along the road before he heard
voices, and recognized that of Mr. Scantlebray--
"I tell you the vessel is the Black Prince, and I know he was to have
unloaded her to-night."
"Anyhow he is not doing so. Not a sign of him."
"The night is too dirty."
"Wyvill--" Coppinger knew that the Captain at the head of the
coast-guard was speaking. "Wyvill, I heard a pistol-shot. Where is
Jenkyns? If you had not been by me I should have said you had acted
wide of your orders. Has any one seen Jenkyns?"
"No, sir."
"Who is that?"
Suddenly a light flashed forth, and glared upon Coppinger. The Captain
in command of the coast-guard uttered an oath.
"You out to-night, Mr. Coppinger! Where do you come from?"
"As you see--from Polzeath."
"Humph! From no other direction?"
"I'll trouble you to let me pass."
Coppinger thrust the Preventive man aside, and went on his way.
When he was beyond earshot, Scantlebray said--"I trust he did not
notice me along with you. You see, the night is too dirty. Let him
bless his stars, it has saved him."
"I should like to see Jenkyns," said the officer. "I am almost certain
I heard a pistol-shot; but when I sent in the direction whence it
came, there was no one to be seen. It's a confounded dark night."
"I hope they've not give us the slip, Captain?" said Wyvill.
"Impossible," answered the officer. "Impossible. I took every
precaution. They did not go out to-night. As Mr. Scantlebray says, the
night was too dirty."
Then they went on.
In the meantime Coppinger was making the best of his way to the downs.
He knew his direction even in the dark--he had the "new-take" wall as
a guide. What the coast-guard did not suspect was that this "new-take"
had been made for the very purpose of serving as a guide by which the
smugglers could find their course in the blackest of winter's nights;
moreover, in the fiercest storm the wall served as a shelter, under
lea of which they might approach their cave. Coppinger was without a
lantern. He doubted if one would avail him, in his quest; moreover,
the night was lightening, as the moon rode higher.
The smuggler captain stood for a moment on the edge of the cliffs to
consider what course he should adopt to find Judith. If she had
reached the summit, it was possible enough that she had lost her way
and had rambled inland among lanes and across fields, pixy-led. In
that case it was a hopeless task to search for her; moreover, there
would be no particular necessity for him to do so, as, sooner or
later, she must reach a cottage or a farm, where she could learn her
direction. But if she had gone too near the edge, or if, in her
ascent, her foot had slipped, then he must search the shore. The tide
was ebbing now, and left a margin on which he could walk. This was the
course he must adopt. He did not descend by the track to the chimney,
as the creeping down of the latter could be effected in absolute
darkness only with extreme risk; but he bent his way over the down
skirting the crescent indentation of the cove to the donkey-path,
which was now, as he knew, unwatched. By that he swiftly and easily
descended to the beach. Along the shore he crept carefully toward that
portion which was overhung by the precipice along which the way ran
from the mouth of the shaft. The night was mending, or at all events
seemed better. The moon, as it mounted, cast a glimmer through the
least opaque portions of the driving clouds. Coppinger looked up, and
could see the ragged fringe of down torn with gullies, and thrust up
into prongs, black as ink against the gray of the half-translucent
vapors. And near at hand was the long dorsal ridge that concealed the
entrance to the cave, sloping rapidly upward and stretching away
before him into shadow.
Coppinger mused. If one were to fall from above, would he drop between
the cliff and this curtain, or would he strike and be projected over
it on to the shelving sand up which stole the waves? He knew that the
water eddying against friable sandstone strata that came to the
surface had eaten them out with the wash, and that the hard flakes of
slate and ribs of quartz stood forth, overhanging the cave. Most
certainly, therefore, had Judith fallen, her body must be sought on
the sea-face of the masking ridge. The smuggler stood at the very
point where in the preceding afternoon Jamie and the dog had scrambled
up that fin-like blade of rock and disappeared from the astonished
gaze of Judith. The moon, smothered behind clouds, and yet, in a
measure self-assertive, cast sufficient light down into the cove to
glitter on, and transmute into steel, the sea-washed and smoothed, and
still wet, ridge, sloping inland as a seawall. As Coppinger stood
looking upward he saw in the uncertain light something caught on the
fangs of this saw-ridge, moving uneasily this way, then that,
something dark, obscuring the glossed surface of the rock, as it might
be a mass of gigantic sea-tangles.
"Judith!" he cried. "Is that you?" and he plunged through the pool
that intervened, and scrambled up the rock.
He caught something. It was cloth. "Judith! Judith!" he almost
shrieked in anxiety. That which he had laid hold of yielded, and he
gathered to him a garment of some sort, and with it he slid back into
the pool, and waded on to the pebbles. Then he examined his capture by
the uncertain light, and by feel, and convinced himself that it was a
cloak--a cloak with clasp and hood--just such as he had seen Judith
wearing when he flashed his lantern over her on the platform at the
mouth of the shaft.
He stood for a moment, numbed as though he had been struck on the head
with a mallet, and irresolute. He had feared that Judith had fallen
over the edge, but he had hoped that it was not so. This discovery
seemed to confirm his worst fears.
If the cloak were there--she also would probably be there also, a
broken heap. She who had thrown him down and broken him, had been
thrown down herself, and broken also--thrown down and broken because
she had come to rescue him from danger. Coppinger put his hand to his
head. His veins were beating as though they would burst the vessels in
his temples, and suffuse his face with blood. As he stood thus
clasping his brow with his right hand, the clouds were swept for an
instant aside, and for an instant the moon sent down a weird glare
that ran like a wave along the sand, leaped impediments, scrambled up
rocks, and flashed in the pools. For one moment only--but that
sufficed to reveal to him a few paces ahead a black heap: there was no
mistaking it. The rounded outlines were not those of a rock. It was a
human body lying on the shingle half immersed in the pool at the foot
of the reef!
A cry of intensest, keenest anguish burst from the heart of Coppinger.
Prepared though he was for what he must see by the finding of the
cloak, the sight of that motionless and wrecked body was more than he
could endure with composure. In the darkness that ensued after the
moon-gleam he stepped forward, slowly, even timidly, to where that
human wreck lay, and knelt on both knees beside it on the wet sand.
He waited. Would the moon shine out again and show him what he dreaded
seeing? He would not put down a hand to touch it. One still clasped
his brow, the other he could not raise so high, and he held it against
his breast where it had lately been strapped. He tried to hold his
breath, to hear if any sound issued from what lay before him. He
strained his eyes to see if there were any, the slightest movement in
it. Yet he knew there could be none. A fall from these cliffs above
must dash every spark of life out of a body that reeled down them. He
turned his eyes upward to see if the cloud would pass; but no--it
seemed to be one that was all-enveloping, unwilling to grant him that
glimpse which must be had, but which would cause him acutest anguish.
He could not remain kneeling there in suspense any longer. In
uncertainty he was not. The horror was before him--and must be faced.
He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew forth tinder-box and
flint. With a hand that had never trembled before, but now shaking as
with an ague, he struck a light. The sparks flew about, and were long
in igniting the touchwood. But finally it was kindled, and glowed red.
The wind fanned it into fitful flashes, as Coppinger, stooping, held
the lurid spark over the prostrate form, and passed it up and down on
the face. Then suddenly it fell from his hand, and he drew a gasp.
The dead face was that of a bearded man.
A laugh--a wild, boisterous laugh--rang out into the night, and was
re-echoed by the cliff, as Coppinger leaped to his feet. There was
hope still. Judith had not fallen.