"Olive, it is I who have brought you to your death!"
His face was ghastly with the horror of his self-reproach and
desperation. The two were standing now, locked in each other's embrace,
beneath the cliff, watching the narrow strip of beach rapidly disappear
as the fierce tide came pouring in. Nothing could be seen immediately
above, for the rock beetled overhead as though about to topple upon
them, but running out on each side of the bay rose a crescent of
frowning wall. And from thence no succour need be expected, for its
summit was lost in the gathering mist. The winter twilight was fast
descending, the chill blast howled and shrieked over the heaving,
storm-lashed main, and a chaos of driving, leaping billows, whose great
leaden backs and white rearing crests rose hideous and spectral in the
gloaming as they dashed the one upon the other in their tumultuous rush,
flinging themselves high against the adamantine walls and falling back
with a roar and a hiss. The grim coastline was enveloped in wreathe of
white spray, and the surf-lashed base of the heights rang again as it
repelled the onset of each watery monster, while in showers of milky
foam the sea ran from the black, slippery rocks. A scene of wild
grandeur, unparalleled in its tremendous loneliness--a terrible scene,
even when viewed from a point of safety. What must it then have been to
the two who stood there awaiting an inevitable death!
"It is I who have brought you to this!" She looked up at him and
nestled more closely in his embrace. In the midst of her bodily fear--
the natural fear of a weak woman suddenly brought face to face with a
horrible death--she was able to smile. And it was a smile of unselfish
reassurance.
"No, dearest. It is not your doing," she said. "If it had not been for
finding me here, you would have gone your way in safety. Roland--it is
I who have destroyed _you_."
"By heaven--no!" he broke in passionately. "I would sooner die with you
than live without you. But nothing can get rid of the fact that it is
owing to me that you are here at all. You, for whom I would have given
five hundred lives--would have lost the salvation of a thousand souls to
see in safety now. Oh, my darling--my heart's sweet love--will not your
God again take me at my word and work a miracle to save only you!" he
added with a despairing, bitter cry, as he sank upon his knees at her
feet, still clasping her with both his arms.
She bent her face down till it rested against his, and her soft,
caressing hands were round his neck.
"Hush--my own!" she said. "Do not talk in that desperate way. A very
little while, and we shall be united to part no more. We--you
especially--have been terribly tried; now we are about to pass through
the waters of death, but our sweet Saviour is very merciful. He will
not part us again."
Her calm courage and the solemn conviction of her tender tones seemed to
breathe a halo of peace amid that jarring scene of storm and chaos.
Their faces were wet with the showers of salt spray, and the girl's soft
hair, partially unfastened, was tossed rudely about by the cutting wind.
The thunder of the surf upon the shore and the shrieking of the fierce
gale drowned all other sound, yet in an interval in the turmoil, her
voice could be heard fervently praying. She pleaded that if it was
agreeable to the Divine Will they might be rescued from their imminent
peril, but if not, and it was appointed to them now to pass through the
awful waters of death, that grace might be given them both patiently to
undergo whatever period of penance might be necessary to their
purification, so that they might at last be united, never again to part,
safe in the Heavenly Country. Then, with her head upon her lover's
shoulder, his arms around her, and her hands in his, it seemed to Olive
Ingelow that the world was very far away, and she could await with
perfect resignation the short but terrible struggle which should set
them both free.
Rolling in, huge and awful in the dim gloaming, the mighty billows
roared nearer and nearer, hurling great masses of milky foam at their
very feet. They could hardly see each other's face in the weird,
sepulchral light.
"Roland, we are close to Smugglers' Ladder, are we not?"
He started at the sound of her voice, in which there was a ring of hope.
"Quite close. Why?"
"Is there no chance of escape that way?"
He shook his head sadly.
"None whatever. I had thought of that, but it seemed better to--to face
the worst here in the open than to be drowned like rats in a hole. Why,
the tide runs up it like a mill-race."
He had thought of it, and now her suggestion revived the ghastliness of
the idea. What a terrible revenge of Fate! Come what might there could
be no hope. Had the awful Shape been seen upon The Skegs again? Would
not men be discussing the apparition with bated breath the next morning
as the chill dawn revealed to the eyes of the devoted searchers two
drowned corpses? Could this legion of leaping, hungry billows be the
same blue, smiling, peaceful sea, on whose shore they two had sat
together, when from Olive's lips he first heard about the drear tale of
violence and revenge which overshadowed the spot as with a curse. If he
were to meet his end in that place of all others? Then another idea
struck him. They might by singular good luck find some ledge that would
place them above the reach of the waters. He himself had no such hope,
but it was just barely possible.
"It is our only chance," he continued, "and the very poorest of poor
ones. But come; we will try it."
On they sped, straining every nerve to reach the great jagged rent in
the cliff, which they could see not far ahead. Farther than they
thought, though, for as they stood within its dismal portals, the
advance-guard of the tide already swirled knee-deep around them.
Gloomy and terrible in the extreme was the aspect of the chasm. The
last faint light from without, straggling through, here and there fell
upon the black, slippery rock, and the bellowing of the surf as it came
dashing in, white and seething, was echoed in hollow clamour up the
sides of the abyss. No light was visible above, and the atmosphere
within this hideous cave hung cold and dank as the breaths of the grave.
And upon the man who knew the grisly secret which these slimy walls had
witnessed and had kept so well, the horrors of the place weighed an
hundredfold. The outer darkness; the roaring and hissing of the great
surges; the shriek of the gale and the flapping of the long wisps of
seaweed against the face of the rock; all were as accusing voices--the
exultant gibbering of demons come to claim their just due--and it seemed
to his overtaxed brain that ghostly hands were stretched forth to drag
him to his everlasting woe. A cold sweat was on his brow and his knees
trembled under him. Were it not that a most precious life depended on
his exertions, he would have yielded up the struggle then and there, and
have plunged headlong into the boiling surf.
It was of no avail. They had immured themselves in their living tomb.
A dozen great seas came sweeping in one after the other, and the chasm
was a mass of white, churning water dashing backwards and forwards with
resistless velocity. They had retreated as far as they could go, and
now stood up to the waist in water. The very next wave would carry them
off their feet--and then--
It came--crashing high against the cliff overhead, and whirling back
with lightning speed. Then another and another, and Roland Dorrien was
struggling in the surge--alone.
Oh, the agony of that moment! Even while battling wildly for a minute
more of dear life, the awful, aching void of separation was the only
consciousness he retained--that he was not to be allowed even to die
with her hand clasped in his. We know that a man can dream the events
of hours in as many seconds. In this fleeting moment this man endured
an eternity of everlasting woe. He was separated from her in death--he
would be separated from her in the future life--and his lot would be
among the lost for ever.
Then his senses began to fail. He was hurled to and fro, there was a
roaring in his ears; he was sinking--down, down, down--then up again
into black space. Then he struck against hard rock--his footing was
firm. Instinctively he threw out his hands and grasped something long
and trailing; the waters fell back, and with a mighty effort he resisted
their suction. He was on a ledge.
But Olive? Had the Eternal Vengeance spared him and taken her life?
Was she drowned and dead in that hell-cave while he wae doomed to live?
No--a thousand times no!
And then a cry, so awful and blood-curdling in its unspeakable agony,
rang out above the thundrous turmoil in that grisly cave, as surely was
never emitted from human breast before. It rose above the bellowing of
the mighty surges, it rang upward through the black sides of the chasm,
with many a weird echo--upward into the outer air--upward, till
assuredly it must have mounted to the very throne of high Heaven.
"Great God! Great God! Spare her and take me!" But a grim spectre
stood at his side--only a voice from the pit of the grave answered in
his ear:
"Life for life. Blood for blood. Live on, accursed one, but her thou
shalt never behold again in this world or in that which is to come.
Never--never!"
The survivor stood for a moment on the edge of the black, slippery rock,
straining his haggard eyes as he strove to pierce the gloom through
which the white, seething foam was dimly rushing.
"Never--never!" he shouted, with a maniacal laugh, and poising himself
he leaped headlong into the surf.
What was that? As he rose, something came in contact with him. It was
a human body, limp, lifeless. A thrill of the most exquisite relief
shot through his heart. He had found her. And now he felt that he had
the strength of a hundred men. Half-a-dozen powerful, yet judicious
strokes--for to be dashed against the rock would be fatal--and he was
again grasping the ledge. A wave swept up, lifting them high in the
air, but he clung to his hold with the tenacity of despair, and then,
before he knew how it was done, he was crouching on the ledge, holding
the girl's insensible form in his arms.
Was she dead? Ah, no. He could hear her faint, regular breathing as he
pressed his lips to hers. Wave after wave swept their precarious
refuge, but now he was filled with a new hope. They had been spared for
a purpose. Even if they were to die they would die together, and this
reflection was sufficient to fill him with the keenest bliss after the
awful agony of that moment of separation.
With one foot planted firmly against a projection in the rock, and
grasping with both hands the slender and precarious hold which the
seaweed and rock afforded above, Roland Dorrien crouched there for two
long hours in the pitchy darkness, supporting the girl's unconscious
form. Waves surged over them, and more than once it was all he could do
to avoid being swept from the slanting ledge, and his muscles cracked as
he strained every nerve to resist the potent suction of the receding
seas. For two long hours he dared not move a finger or alter his
position by a hair's breadth, and his laboured breathing was loud and
stertorous in the intervals between the howling of the waves in the
cavernous gloom and the hollow, metallic echoes, like the booming toll
of a great bell, which thundered from the overhanging rocks. At length,
when his exhausted strength threatened to bear no more, he suddenly
realised that the onslaughts of the waves were becoming less frequent,
and their force when they did come was weaker. Surely the tide had
turned.