LOST AND FOUND
Mr. Kitto saw the ragged figure shoot from the cave as though propelled
by some unseen power within; and for one second he imagined the worst.
He was relieved when the shipwrecked sailor raised his voice.
"Nan! Nan!" he yelled. "Miss Merridew! Miss Merridew! Nan! Nan! Nan!"
The squatter, running up, alone interrupted him.
"She's gone!" cried Denis in terrible excitement. "Gone clean away--God
knows where! Look for yourself, if you like; with the sun pouring in you
can see to the very end. Do you think I would miss her if it were ten
times the size? See, there's where I left her lying; that was all the
pillow I could give her; you can almost see the shape of her head!"
And the hoarse voice broke piteously; but such a firm, kind hand had him
by the arm, that Denis bit his lips and blinked the tears back to their
source.
"Come, now," said Kitto, "there's nothing wonderful in this; the only
wonder is that we didn't expect it. Why should she have slept so much
longer than you? She had done far less; and they are tougher than you
think. She would wake up and find you flown----"
"Poor Nan! Poor Nan!"
"And having the vitality she must have, to say nothing of the pluck, you
wouldn't expect her to sit still and wait, would you?"
"I suppose not," said Denis, gloomily. "I only know I would have died to
save her what she must have gone through alone--alone."
"You have done your best to die for her," retorted Mr. Kitto, with his
kind smile. "Were her people on board with her?"
"Her father, yes; she has no one else."
"Then you may have to live for her," the older man said gravely. "So
don't commit any more of your follies, and above all don't make yourself
ill without a cause. She is probably trying to find her own way to the
station, and it's safe to be the wrong way."
"But you said no one had been up those stairs."
Mr. Kitto stood confounded in the sun.
"She may be about the beach somewhere," he said hurriedly. "After all,
it's not so little that you take in every cranny at a glance. Come and
let's look. There are all sorts of holes and corners under the cliffs,"
he added as they went, "where my children play hide-and-seek at picnics.
It's our favourite place for them; in fact, that's why I cut those
steps. No harm could come to her here."
But his voice had lost something of its cheery confidence, and in spite
of him it lost more as they sought together, but sought in vain. As for
Denis, there was an end to his lamentations; he was past that stage; but
his dumb eyes plumbed the pit.
"Can you cooey?" asked the squatter. "No, you're too hoarse; don't try.
But I can, like a blackfellow, thank God!" And he arched his sun-burned
hands about his mouth.
"Cooooooooo----eeeey!"
It was long enough and loud to reach the one top-gallant mast of the
_North Foreland_ that they descried between the heads, at a certain
stage of their wanderings, standing out of the waves for a monument to
those beneath: had a single sailor been clinging to it, he must have
heard so penetrating and so sustained a call: but from the lost one on
shore, as from the drowned multitude without the gateway of sparking
blue, not a sound, not a sign.
Doherty and another arrived with blankets, clothes, coffee, mutton,
damper, billy-can, everything that kind thought could send, with a sweet
message from her who sent them; but this fell on deaf ears. Denis would
touch nothing till she whom he had lost was found again; so the squatter
thrust him down into the sand, and between them they forced him to make
a meal. And being at last in a more reasonable frame, he would have
ended by putting on the shoes which he had cast off in the morning, and
forgotten or despised ever since; but now his feet were so swollen, he
could not get them on. But as for letting them send him back to the
station in the buggy, and leaving the search to them, as Mr. Kitto had
now the temerity to suggest, it was as much as Denis could do to hear
him out civilly.
The survivor went his own way after this, and it led him first to the
summit of the cliffs, to see for himself whether there was no trace up
there; for he had been incredulous on that point all along; but now so
many had been up and down that he had still only one man's word for the
absence of foot-marks in the beginning, and he roamed far afield in
vigilant circles. He had been lost himself but for a fire they made on
top of the cliff; and when he came shambling back to the brink, down
below there was quite a galaxy of lanterns moving in different
directions, a constellation of creeping stars. So they had not found her
yet; and now it was black night.
In the utter heart-break of the hour, and the last stage of physical
distress, Denis had half a mind to fling himself over and be done with
it all; but only half a mind, and not a hundredth part of the heart.
Instead, as he went down gingerly in the dusk, one painful step at a
time, he reviled himself from top to bottom for the unnecessary climb
which is not wholly credited to this day. It was already at the root of
everything in the climber's mind. Had he only explored the smaller
cavern, he had been back with succour in one hour instead of three.
Mr. Kitto meanwhile had made up his mind. "We shall never find her
alive," he whispered to his overseer, who arrived upon the scene a
little before Denis's return. "But for that poor fellow's sake we must
keep up the pretence a bit longer. I can see there was something between
them; and when we find her body it will probably kill him; and after all
every soul will have been lost. Did you know the bodies were beginning
to come ashore? There's a little chap I take to be the skipper: last to
leave and first to land."
"But you aren't looking for this girl among them?" the overseer
exclaimed aghast.
"Not yet; but it will come to that," whispered Kitto. "I cooeyed till I
was hoarse; that's why I can't raise my voice above a whisper now; and
all the rest of us are in the same box. Mark my words, it's a case of
suicide, and a fearful case: the poor thing was so terrified at her
position when she awoke and found herself deserted on this desert coast,
that it drove her clean out of her mind. I almost hope he won't live to
realize it was that--though he's the sort we want in this colony--if he
gave up the sea."
"Was there no tracking her?"
"Scarcely a yard from the mouth of the cave, and he doesn't know I did
that; the sand is so heavy outside. But the tracks I did find pointed
straight to the sea. I grant you there were not enough of them to mean
anything in themselves."
They chanced to be passing close to the ti-tree clump as they conversed.
Suddenly the overseer stood still.
"You've looked in there, I suppose?"
"In there? What would be the good? It's not above a dozen yards thick,
though so dense; if she were alive in there she'd have heard us long
ago; if she's dead she's in the sea. Why do you ask?"
"I thought I heard something. That was all."
They moved on a few yards.
"I say, Mr. Kitto, I do hear something! Listen, sir--listen to that!"
They heard the voice distinctly, faint and feeble though it was.
"I am dying!" it moaned. "_Oh, Denis, where are you?_"
Mr. Kitto almost choked.
"Thank God--but if she does die!" he croaked and whispered in one
breath. "We're coming! We're coming, my dear, dear young lady! But," in
his whisper, "who's that hobbling toward us--dot-and-carry-one? It's
Dent, man, it's Dent himself; go and tell him like a good fellow--only
don't raise too much hope." And deeply agitated, the squatter thrust his
lantern among the outer branches of the thicket.
In an instant came the faint voice, immeasurably stronger, and poignant
with a nameless agony:
"Take it away! Oh, take it way, or I must die--I must!"
Kitto flung his lantern far behind him: he had seen a terrified face
among the branches, a burning face that told him all.
"And you have been here all day!" he cried, but chiefly to himself, in
the inward glare of his enlightenment. "And I cooeying till I could
cooey no more!"
"I thought it was savages," the voice in the clump faltered
unconvincingly. "I--I never heard it before----"
"We have everything ready for you," continued Kitto, cheerily: "hot
coffee, plenty to eat, dry clothes, and our best bed when we get you to
it. Here, take this to go on with." His coat came off with the words,
and was thrust through the branches until he felt she had it. "Now I'll
get you the rest," he said, and was hurrying off.
"Wait! Wait!" she called to him, and even more strongly than in her last
alarm. "Where's Denis--Denis Dent? He was the second officer, and he
saved me, he alone. I must speak to him first ... to thank him ... while
I can!"
And her voice broke for him, as his had broken for her, but with more
reason than Nan Merridew could dream; for Denis was lying close at hand
on the beach, with the station overseer stooping over him.