The lonely community had laid its bones to rest in a barren acre. No
flower could bloom there ever, only close, dun turf grew. Below, the
broken, unquiet sea dirged ceaselessly. The spot was in perfect keeping
with the sovereign peace of the grave; that blank, unadorned environment
of nature had the very beauty that can touch human sense with the concord
of death. The young fisher stood motionless, as if his presence were
outrage to the spirit of the silent dwellers below, so eager was he for
life, so brim with passion and play and hearty thirst for strong years of
sunshine and rain. 'Yet how so,' said his heart, 'for I too shall come to
die?'
Softly and soberly he took his way past the ranks of low mounds, and
considered his approach to the House Monitory, whose living dwellers
might be less tolerant of his trespass. For he realised that he had come
within their outer precincts unallowed. On the one hand lay a low wall
to indicate reserve; on the other he approached the base of the
bell-tower itself, and the flanks of the House Monitory. He looked up at
the walls, fully expecting to be spied and brought to rebuke; but all was
blank and quiet as among the dead outside. The tower rose sheer into the
air; for the rest, a tier of the cliff had been fashioned for habitation
by the help of masonry and some shaping and hollowing of the crude rock.
The window lights were high and rare. Except from the tower, hardly could
a glimpse below the sky-line be offered to any within.
He came upon a door, low and narrow as the entrance of a tomb. It looked
so obdurate he never thought to knock there. Then the sound of low,
monotonous chanting, by women's voices, poor and few, told him that he
stood without their chapel; and he understood that the low door giving
upon the place of graves had not been fashioned for the living. Truly he
was alien and incongruous, although that day he had surely been many
degrees nearer death than any dweller there.
He made for the boundary wall, overleaped it, and then by legitimate
pathways came before the entrance door. There he stood long, not finally
determined what he had come to say. It was repugnant to him to ask of any
mortal cover for his doings, the more when they were somewhat amiss.
While he stood, casting about for decision, he was a-stare heedlessly on
a rocky spur near by that bore the moulding of three figures. High upon
its face they stood, where a natural suggestion had been abetted by man,
a rough pediment shaped above, a rough base below, and the names hewn
large: St. Mary, St. Margaret, St. Faith. Of life size they were, and
looked towards the sea.
Ashamed of his own indecision, the boy lifted his hand and knocked at the
wicket, so to force a resolution within the limit of seconds left. The
stone figures clapped back an echo. His heart sprang an invocation in
response, and straightway he relinquished thought of asking an irksome
favour of lower agents. So when the wicket opened, this was all he had to
say: 'Of your charity give food to a hungry body.'
To the pale, spare Monitress, half shrouded in the gloom, the ruddy young
giant, glowing in the sunshine, said this: 'Of your charity give food to
a hungry body.' She paused and looked at the boy, for his great stature,
his fair hair, and grey eyes made him very singular.
The questioning he half feared and expected did not come. The Monitress
withdrew silently, and presently returning handed a portion of bread. She
said, 'Not food for the body, but prayer for the soul is chiefly asked of
our charity.'
The boy's face flamed, understanding how he was rebuked. Thanks stumbled
on his tongue, and no word to excuse could come; so the wicket closed
upon his silence.
Not so closely but that the Monitress could look again, to sigh over that
creature of gross wants with angel-bright hair. Surprised, she saw that
he was instantly away, and mounted high by the three stone saints. She
saw that he touched their feet reverently, that he knelt down, crossed
himself and prayed, in a very seemly fashion. She went away, of her
charity in prayer for his soul.
He stood there still, after his prayer was finished, and his bread, and
looked over the sea long and earnestly; for from that high ledge he saw
away to the Isle Sinister, encompassed with its network of reefs; the
tide running low showed them in black lines, outspread like a map below.
An audacious design he revolved, no less than to achieve the Isle
Sinister yet. The long lines of reefs forbade his boat, but him they
fairly invited, if strong swimming and deft footing could pass him on,
from rock to wave, and from wave to rock, out to the far front of the
great mass where the Warders stood.
He argued with his conscience, that it was no such risk as that he was
bound to encounter for regaining the open sea, since this attempt need
never commit him past retreat.
Sighting his boat uncovered, without delay he went down. He got it
emptied, the leak plugged quite sufficiently for the time, the anchor set
out against the return of the tide; then he raced, plunged, and swam for
the Isle Sinister.
The first stretch went fairly; he met the rough handling of the waves as
a sturdy game, and opposed with an even heart. Before long he had to
recognise grim earnest, and do battle with all his might, so hard were
the elements against him and so cruel. The waves hustled and buffeted and
hurled; and though he prevailed by slow degrees, the rocks connived for
his detriment. Again and again he won to a resting-place, so battered,
breathless, and spent, that to nourish fortitude, he needed to consider
the steady ascent of the vast rock up from the horizon against his
nearing. A moment of elation it was, when, looking back to compare, he
noted that the shore cliffs were dwarfed by the nearer proportions of the
Isle.
But his stout heart made too little allowance for the strain upon loyal
members, so that at last he bungled, fell short at a leap disastrously,
and was swept away, hardly escaping, gashed and stunned. His memory
afterwards could but indistinctly record how he fared thenceforward with
rock and wave. A nightmare remained of swirling waters mad for his life,
and of dark crags swinging down upon him; coming nearer, swinging lower;
with a great shock they smote him. So he came to the Isle Sinister.
He clung precariously, lashed by the waves into an effort after a higher
ledge. As he drew himself up to safety, his brain was clearing and his
breath extending, nor was it long before his faculties were in order for
wonder, gratulation, exultation. Then he shouted aloud. Against the roar
of the surf his voice struck out wild and weak. The ledge was so narrow,
that while his back rested against the rock his feet dangled; he was
nearly naked; he was bleeding; soon for return he must face peril again.
Looking down at the waters below, leaping and snarling, and over the wild
expanse he had passed, to the shore half a league away, counting the cost
in wounds and bruises, still his young heart mounted above pain and
doubt, to glory in indomitable strength. He flung back his wet head to
laugh and shout again and again, startling sea-birds to flight and
bringing out echoes hearty enough to his ears.
Surely that rock answering so was the first Warder.
Spite of weariness and unsteadiness of head, he got on his feet, and
passed from that difficult ledge of rock round to the front, where by
steep grades the Isle showed some slight condescension to the sea. As he
advanced he tried for ascent, unsatisfied still.
The five Warders stood in full parade; their rank hemmed him round;
against his level the shadow of the Isle rested above their knees,
between each and each a narrow vertical strip of sea and heaven struck
blindingly sweet and blue. Sea-birds wheeled and clamoured, misliking
this invasion of their precincts. To his conceit the tremendous noise of
the breakers below sounded an unavailing protest against his escape.
He came upon a sight that displaced his immediate desire to scale the
heights above: from the base below the tide had withdrawn, and there lay
a stretch of boulders and quiet rock pools within a fringe of magnificent
surf. Down he sped straightway to hold footing debatable with the jealous
sea. Close against the line of surf, at a half-way point between the
solid wall of the Isle and the broken wall of the Warders, he looked up
at either height north and south. Equal towards the zenith they rose,
here based upon sombre quiet, there upon fierce white tumult, that sent
up splendid high columns, whose spray swept over the interspace of
tumbling sea and touched the shine of the pools with frore grey. He
sighed towards those unattainable Warders.
The air was charged with brine; its damp stayed on his skin, its salt on
his lips. Thirsting, he went about with an eye for a water-spring, and
made straight for a likely cleft. Darkest among the many scars of the
rock it showed; deep it went, and wound deeper at his nearing. He entered
the gape over boulders, and a way still there was wide before him; he
took nine paces with gloom confronting, a tenth--aslant came a dazzling
gleam of white. Amazed he faced to it, held stone-still an instant, sped
on and out; he stood in full sunlight, and winked bewildered at the
incredible open of fair sands before him.
The wonder dawned into comprehension. Though far eyes were deluded by a
perfect semblance of solidity, the half of the Isle was hollow as a
shell. Over against him rose the remaining moiety; high walls of rock
swept round on either side, hindered from complete enclosure by the cleft
of his entrance. He turned and looked back through the gorge, and again
over the sunlit open; it was hard to believe he was out of dreamland, so
Eden-bright and perfect was this contrast to the grand sombre chasm he
had left. White and smooth, the sands extended up to the base of the dark
rocks. There rich drapery of weed indicated the tide-mark; strips of
captured water gleamed; great boulders lay strewn; coves and alcoves
deeply indented the lines of the enclosing walls. To the boy's eyes it
looked the fairest spot of earth the sea could ever find to visit. Its
aspect of lovely austere virginity, candid, serene, strictly girt,
touched very finely on the fibres of sense and soul.
He stepped out on firm blanch sand ribbed slightly by the reluctant ebb.
Trails of exquisite weed, with their perfect display of every slender
line and leaf betokened a gracious and gentle outgoing of the sea. In
creamy pink, ivory, citron, and ranges of tender colour that evade the
fact of a name, these delicate cullings lay strewn, and fragile shells of
manifold beauty and design. There, among weed and shell, he spied a
branch of coral, and habit and calling drew him to it instantly. He had
never fetched up its like, for the colour was rare, and for its thickness
and quality he wondered. Suddenly the coral drops from his hand; he
utters an inarticulate cry and stands amazed. His eye has fallen on a
mark in the sand; it is of a human footstep.
Blank disappointment at this sign of forestalling struck him first, but
startled wonder followed hard, and took due prominence as he looked
around on his solitude encompassed by steep black heights, and heard the
muffled thunder outside that would not be shut off by them. He stooped to
examine the naked footprint, and was staggered by the evidence it gave;
for this impression, firm and light, had an outward trend, a size, a
slightness, most like a woman's. It was set seaward towards the gorge. He
looked right and left for footprints of return--none were there! A lone
track he saw that led hardly further, growing faint and indistinct, for
the feet had trodden there when the wash of the ebb was recent.
He turned, and following reversely at a run, came to the far wall, where
every sign failed among pools and weedy boulders; circled with all speed,
snatching a sight of every cove and cleft, and then sprang back through
the gorge.
The gloom and the fierce tumult of that outside ravine smote with a shock
upon masculine wits that now had conceived of the presence of a woman
there. Compassion cried, Poor soul! poor soul! without reservation, and
aloud he called hearty reassurance, full-lunged, high-pitched. Though but
a feeble addition to the great noises there, the sea-birds grew restless:
only the sea-birds, no other living thing moved in response.
He made sure of a soon discovery, but he leapt along from boulder to
boulder, hunting into every shadow, and never a one developed a cave; but
he called in vain. The sea limited him to a spare face of the Isle; when
that was explicit, he was left to reckon with his senses, because they
went so against reason.
The irreconcilable void sent him back to the first tangible proof, and
again he stood beside the footprints pondering uneasily. Had he scared a
woman unclothed, who now in the shame and fear of sex crouched perdue?
But no, his search outside had been too thorough, and the firm, light,
even pace was a contradiction.
Up and down he went in close search, but no other sign of human presence
could he find, not a shred of clothing, not a fragment of food. That
single line of naked footprints, crossing the level sands from
inscrutable rock to obliterate sea, gave a positive indication
circumstantially denied on every hand. The bewildered boy reckoned he
would have been better satisfied to have lighted on some uncanny slot of
finned heels and splay web-toes, imperfectly human; the shapely print
excited a contrast image of delicate, stately, perfect womanhood, quite
intolerable to intellect and emotion of manly composition.
The steeps all round denied the possibility of ascent by tender feminine
feet; for they thwarted his stout endeavour to scale up to the main rock
above, that from the high wall receded and ascended in not extreme grades
to the topmost pitch, where the sun was hanging well on the ponent slope.
His strict investigation took him round each wide scallop of the
enclosure, a course that was long to conclude by reason of exquisite
distractions that beset every hollow of the way. For the clear rock pools
he found in these reserves held splendours of the sea's living blossoms:
glowing beds of anemones full blown, with purples of iris and orchis,
clover red, rose red, sorrel red, hues of primrose and saffron, broad
spread like great chrysanthemums' bosses. And above the wavy fringes,
never quite motionless, dark wet buds hung waiting for the tide; and the
crystal integrity mirroring these was stirred by flashes of silver-green
light, the to-and-fro play of lovely minute rock-fish.
He had circled two-thirds and more when to his vigilant perceptions a
hint came. Some ribbons of glossy weed hanging from shoulder height
stirred a trifle overmuch in their shelter to the touch of wind.
Instantly the wary boy thrust a hand through and encountered, not rock,
but a void behind; he parted the thick fall of weed, and a narrow cleft
was uncurtained, with blackness beyond, that to his peering dissolved
into a cool, dim sea-cave, floored with water semilucent, roofed with
darkness. Eagerly he pressed through, and dropped knee-deep into the
still, dark water. Involuntarily his motions were subdued; silently,
gently, he advanced into the midst of encompassing water and rock and
darkness.
Such slight intrusion of daylight as the heavy kelp drapery allowed
slanted into the glooms in slender, steady threads; from his wading hosts
of wan lights broke and ran for the walls, casting up against them paler
repeats; when he halted, faint sound from them wapped and sobbed,
dominant items in a silence hardly discomposed by the note of far-off
surf, so modulated by deflecting angles as to reach the ear faint and low
as the murmur that haunts the curves of a shell.
For a long minute he stood in the midst motionless, while the chill of
the water told on his blood, and the quiet darkness on his spirit.
Mystery stepped here with an intimate touch, absent when under the open
sky the sands presented their enigma. His heart did not fail; only
resolution ordered it now, not impulse.
He spoke again to presumable ears. Only his own words he heard multiply
in fading whispers through the hovering darkness. Silence came brooding
back as he stood to hearken.
As his eyes dilated to better discernment, he suspected that an aisle
withdrew, from a faint pallor, narrowing as it tended towards his height,
explicable if water receded there, gathering vague translucence from some
unseen source of light. To verify, he was advancing when a considerate
notion turned him about. He left the dim cavern, returned in the blinding
sunshine to the footprints, knelt by the last, and set his fingers in the
sand for inscription. For a long moment he considered, for no words
seemed effectual to deliver his complexed mind. When he wrote it was a
sentence of singular construction, truly indicative of how vague awe and
dread had uprisen to take large standing beside simple humane solicitude.
He traced three large crosses, and then three words. Simple construing
would read thus: 'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost
at your service.' Moderately content with that rendering, he transcribed
it thrice on the rocks, graving with the branch of coral. At either end
of the entrance gorge he set it, and again large and fair above the
hidden mouth of the cave.
Back into darkness he dived to take up research, and wading towards the
tremor of light, entered a long recess that led under low arches of rock,
till light grew more definite, and the water-way ended, closed in by a
breastwork of rock. But, this surmounted, the boy saw water again, of
absolute green, dark as any stone of royal malachite. The level was lower
by several feet, perhaps the true tide-level, perhaps yet another limited
reservoir that the sea replenished daily. He slid down the scarp and went
on, heartened by the increase of light.
The depth of the water varied, and the boy swam more often than he waded.
The colour of the water varied; now it strengthened into a lucent green,
now darkness threatened it, and he swam warily till it altered again,
unaccountably. As his passing troubled the placid water, and ripples of
colourless light, circling away from him, sent wavering lines of dim
light rippling in response upon the sides of the passage, he caught
vague, uncertain glimpses of dark rich colour mantling the rocks.
Suddenly, when light and colour were strongest, his way was barred, a
wall of rock closing it abruptly. Baffled and perplexed, the boy swam to
and fro in vain quest of an outlet, till his wits leapt on a fair surmise
that inlets for light there must be submerged. Down he dived, groped,
found justification in the arching rock, emerald flooded, struck boldly
through it, and rose to the surface beyond.
A glory of light and colour dazzled him, momentarily repulsing his
faculties from possession of a grand cavern, spacious, lofty, wonderful,
worthy to be the temple of a sea-god.
He found recovery, he found footing, then straightway lost himself in
wonder, for such splendours he had never dreamed could be.
Fathoms overhead the great vault hung unpropped. Sunlight shot in high up
in rays and bars through piercings and lancet clefts, and one large rent
that yet afforded no glimpse of the blue. The boy's eyes wavered and sank
for solace to the liquid paving below, flawless and perfect as the jasper
sea of heaven. There pure emerald melted and changed in subtle gradations
to jade green and beryl green; from pale chrysoprase to dark malachite
no stone of price could deny its name to colourings else matchless. And
there reflection struck down a rich inlay that sard could not excel: not
sard, agate, essonite, chalcedony, in master work of lapidaries; for the
sombre rocks were dressed with the deep crimson of sea-moss, velvet fine.
Amid the sober richness of weeds hung the amber of sponge-growths, blonds
to enhance intense tertiaries. He saw that nature's structure showed
certain gracious resemblances to human architecture: sheer rocks rose up
from the water like the shattered plinths of columns; there were apses;
there were aisles receding into far gloom; rayed lights overhead made a
portion raftered, and slanting down a way hinted gothic sheaves and
clerestory ruins. Temple and palace both it was to the eyes of the
intruder. He could not conceive of any mortal, though noble and exalted
among men, entering, possessing, presiding adequately in this wonderful
sea sanctuary that nature had fashioned so gloriously, and hidden away so
cunningly, with a covering of frowning crag, and fencing of reef and
wave. He amended the thought to except the noblest dead. Supreme in
dignity, excellent even here, high death crowning high life might be
worshipped duly by such sepulture. A slab of rock like an altar tomb in
the midst touched his perceptions to this issue.