THE DEATH TRAPS
From the highest shoulder of the point she could see La Touche
clambering over the seaward rocks.
He seemed more in search of shells and seaweed than of Bompard. Then,
climbing down, she reached the lower ground and struck off inland. If
she did not succeed in finding Bompard she would at least succeed in
avoiding La Touche.
Right from the Lizard Point the plain stretched to higher ground which
marked the beginning of the sea cliffs, great rocks strewed the way and
the ground was torn by the beds of small water courses, depressions that
would suddenly become little rivers in the deluging rains; stunted
bushes huddled as if for shelter at the rock bases and the voice of the
sea came here, broken and mixing with the whisper of the bushes to the
wind.
This place had once been a glacier bed, rounded boulders standing in
pools of water told that.
A gull flying in from the sea and carrying a fish in its beak drew her
attention; it was being pursued by a larger gull. They were both of the
Burgomaster type, but the fish carrier was noticeable on account of the
intense blackness of its tail plumage.
As they passed the fish dropped, fell on a patch of yellow ground just
in front of the girl, sank, and vanished.
She stopped dead and drew back with a chill at her heart. Then she
picked up a stone and cast it on the patch of ground. It vanished even
more swiftly than the fish.
It was one of the bogs the men had spoken of. They had described the
treacherous ground as white, this was yellowish and not very noticeable,
it was also death and another dozen steps would have led her into it.
She advanced cautiously, reached the border line and kneeling down
pushed her hand into the yellow mud. It was like pushing it into a cold
slimy mouth. She could scarcely draw it out again, when she did the mud
was clinging to her hand like a yellow glove.
She came back to one of the rock ponds and washed her hand, it was like
trying to get rid of treacle and, as she washed, she tried to fancy what
would have happened but for the gull, tried to picture herself being
slowly pulled down into that cold darkness and entombed there forever.
Then, skirting the place of danger, she went on, cautiously, examining
carefully the ground before her. She had not gone ten yards when it
seemed to her that a patch right in front of her was ever so slightly
darker and moister looking than the ground she was treading.
She picked up a stone and cast it on the patch. It vanished. Then she
knew the feeling of the man who finds himself ambuscaded.
This place was a death trap, or, rather, a series of death traps, there
might be pits lying in wait for her quite unnoticeable. She turned and
began to retrace her steps, so shaken that she would not trust even the
ground that she had already covered but kept testing it by casting
stones before her.
From a little distance an observer might have fancied her engaged in
some new sort of game.
Near the safety of the Lizard rocks her eyes, closely scanning the
ground before her, caught sight of something. It was a half-burned
match. No one else but Bompard could have dropped that match. He had
started without his tinder-box, had evidently found that match in his
pocket, lit his pipe and walked on. There was only one direction in
which he would have walked unless he had struck inland, which was
improbable. He would have made as she had made to cross to the higher
ground.
Even if he had walked inland he would not have escaped, for, casting her
eyes in that direction she could see yellow patches spreading between
the rocks.
She knew now what had become of Bompard, and with lips dry as pumice
stone she began to climb till she reached the point where she had sat
that morning. If the mud had taken Bompard, had he cried out? If so, La
Touche would have heard his cries, for the caves were not so far from
the Lizard rocks.
La Touche was nowhere to be seen, but she had no fear about him, or only
the fear that he would come back. Bompard was gone. Bompard was dead,
she knew it as though she had seen him engulfed, and she was here alone,
in this place, with La Touche.
She put her hand to her side automatically to make sure that the knife
was there. Then she sat with her eyes fixed on the distant islands,
haze-purple in the light of the westering sun.
The thought of the boat on the beach came to her with the idea that she
might launch it and escape, make for the islands and put all that sea
between herself and the man she hated. But she could not launch the boat
single-handed and, if she could, it would have been impossible to work
it single-handed with those big oars.
She could see the boat from where she sat and the line of the beach
leading away past the seal-nursery and the sea elephant strand to the
rocks that formed the north-eastern horn of the bay. In stormy weather
those rocks would be invisible in the smoke of the breakers, to-day they
were clearly defined. She could see the great seals as they moved slowly
hither and thither and the ship's figure-head as it stood to this side
of them and, like a pin point of white the great white skull on the
sands, a desolate scene, but almost benign when compared to the savagery
of rocks and cliffs visible on her other side and that sinister plain,
where the death traps were set and waiting with the patience of
malignity for what might come to feed them.
She had fought the human failing that makes men brood and trouble about
the future, a failing that is mostly born of houses and artificial life;
already the struggle against it was less. She was coming more and more
under that which has dominion over all things that live in the open and
have to fight for life--the moment. If she had examined her own mind she
would have found that the death of Bompard, of which she felt certain,
affected her far less than it would have done some days ago, that her
desire to escape to the islands was caused by the hatred of La Touche
more than by fear of the future with him.
She would have found that her capacity for hatred had increased and also
her dangerous qualities, and she would have found all this because God
had so ordered life that it is adaptable, making the defensive and
offensive qualities of the being capable of increase or decrease in
answer to environment or need.
She came back to the beach. It wanted, still, a couple of hours of
sun-down. There was no sign yet of La Touche, but, just as she knew in
her heart that Bompard was dead she knew that La Touche was all right.
He had been keeping to the rocks by the sea, leaving that aside; she
knew that he would come back. He was of the sort that remains unscathed
when the better man is taken.
She had one dread; that La Touche might get the knife from her, throw it
away, and be master by his superior strength.
She had his clasp knife in her pocket, but it was a thing of little
account in a struggle. Well, she must be on her guard. Then came the
thought: "But how can I be on my guard when I am asleep?"
Nothing would be easier, if he were really in earnest, than for him to
creep upon her whilst she slept, and disarm her.
She tried to dismiss this idea. La Touche was not crafty enough for that
and, besides, would he go to the lengths of a physical struggle? He had
been on the point of hitting her, it was true, but that was in a moment
of excitement. Was she not painting him in too desperate colours?
Argue as she would on the question, reason, instinctive reason, always
came back with the same answer: "Be on your guard, that knife is the
only barrier between you and heaven knows what. Without it you would be
at the mercy of a superior force. La Touche is no melodramatic villain;
he is, what is perhaps worse for you, a creature of low instincts,
stronger than you. Beware of being at his mercy."
With her mind filled by these thoughts she set to work getting supper
ready. La Touche had taken the tinder box with him, so a fire was out of
the question and she contented herself by laying out the beef that had
served for dinner, and some biscuits.
Then she saw that she had only laid two plates. Working
half-unconsciously she had ruled Bompard out. She looked at the things
lying there on the sand, then she turned away from them. La Touche had
crossed the rocks and was coming along the beach. He was trailing a long
ribband of seaweed he had picked up and as he drew closer she saw that
he had left his ill-humor behind him.
"There was no sight of Bompard," said he, "he has not come back, then?"
"Bompard will not come back," replied the girl, "we will never see him
again."
Then she told of the death traps beyond the rocks and of the match.
La Touche listened, standing, and still holding the ribband of seaweed
in his fingers.
She could see that he believed what she said and yet his words gave the
lie to what was in his face.
"Oh, Bompard will come back all right," said he. "He's not such a fool
as to get into any of those bogs; he's sulking, that's all."
He shaded his eyes, looking back towards the rocks as though on the
chance of seeing the missing one; then he sat down before his plate and
helped himself to food and the girl, loathing him and the food as well,
sat down and made a pretence of eating.
She noticed that he was cheerful, for a wonder. He ate with good
appetite and shewed in his movements and manner and voice when he spoke
a restrained vivacity new to him.
His blondness, the washed-out blue of his eyes, his features, his voice,
she considered all these anew as she sat opposite to him. It seemed to
her that anything truly manly about him had come from the sea; that
essentially he was a product of Mont Martre or the Banlieu of old Paris.
She loathed him now as only a woman can loathe a man and, woman-like,
her loathing focussed itself upon his blondness and the colour of his
eyes.
Then, when she had done with the pretence of eating she rose up and,
leaving him to remove the things, walked down to the water's edge and
along towards the break in the cliffs.
The tide was nearly out and the sea scarcely broke on the rocks; she had
never seen it calmer nor the islands closer. They seemed to have drawn
in shore during the last half hour and as she looked she saw a great
flock of gulls coming landward, and, as she turned to watch them, she
noticed the far-off mountain tops visible through the cliff break. They
were fuming. One might have fancied that fires had been lit all along
their tops and round the highest peak a turban of cloud was winding
itself, coil on coil.
Then as she stood watching, and from away over, there came a rumble,
deep and cavernous, as if a gargantuan dray were being driven over
subterranean roads. It died out in echoes amongst the foothills and
the silence returned broken only by the wash of the sea on the beach.
She turned towards the sea. It had altered suddenly in colour and from
away beyond the islands the wind was coming. She could see it, raking
the sea like a comb. Then it struck the beach and yelled away up the
break in the cliffs like a hunter in a hurry to get to the wild work
going on amidst the hills.
She turned back towards the caves.
La Touche had left the tin plates lying on the sand and the wind, which
seemed to possess a hundred fingers, was chasing them about. He was
trying to recapture them and as he brought them back he laughed. It was
the first time she had seen him laugh. Then as he stowed them away he
shewed a disposition towards intimacy and talkativeness.
"That's what the winds are in this place," said he, "no wonder ships
steer clear of it."
"I'm not thinking of the wind," said she, "I'm thinking of Bompard."
"Oh, Bompard will come back all right," said he, "the grub's here and
that will bring him. Bompard will come back all right."
"No," said she, "he will never come back and you know it."
She turned away from him. Dusk was now falling and as she entered her
cave the wind from the sea suddenly fell dead. Almost immediately it
began to blow again, but now from the land and as though this land wind
were spreading a pall over the sky darkness fell suddenly and with the
darkness she could hear the rain coming with the sound she had heard
once before like the murmuring of a great top spun by a giant.
Then the rain burst on the beach with a roar through which came the hiss
of the rain-swept sea.
The sound was almost welcome. As she lay in the darkness it seemed like
a protecting wall between herself and La Touche. La Touche's ill-temper
would have disturbed her less than his cheerfulness and amiability, born
so suddenly and from no apparent reasons. She had determined not to
sleep and she had lain down fully dressed; even to the oilskin coat and
with her boots on; to-morrow she would go off and hide amongst the
bushes beyond the cliff break and get some sleep, but to-night she would
not close her eyes; so she told herself.
She had taken the knife from its sheath and placed it beside her, her
hand rested on it. An hour passed, and now, as she lay listening to the
pouring of the rain her fingers felt the pattern of the hilt. The hilt
was striated cross-ways to give a better grip, and as her fingers
wandered up and down the strictions the cross bars of a ladder were
suggested to her. The steady pouring of the rain seemed to work on this
idea and make it more real. Then she was climbing a ladder set against
the cliffs. La Touche was holding it at the foot and Bompard was waiting
for her at the cliff top. He helped her up and then the dream changed
to something else, and to something else, till she woke suddenly to the
recognition that she had been asleep for a long time and that fear,
deadly fear, was clutching her by the throat.
She sat up, leaning on her elbow. The rain was still falling, though the
sound of it was much less, and the blackness was so intense that it
seemed moulded round her. She felt for the knife and found it. Then she
lay down again, listening.
The tide was coming in and she recognised, and not for the first time, a
curious singing, chanting echo that always accompanied the waves of the
incoming tide.
Fear is reasonless, it is also Protean, and this sea voice coming
through the night turned the fear of La Touche to the fear of Bompard.
What if he were to return, cold and wet, from that terrible grave-yard
beyond the rocks?