I had not time to feel any fear, for, almost before I could realize the
fact that I was falling, I touched the ground. The point from which I
had slipped was above the reach of the water, but I fell upon the
shingly beach so heavily that I was hardly conscious for a few minutes.
When I came to my senses again, I lay still for a little while, trying
to make out where I was, and how I came there. I was stunned and
bewildered. Underneath me were the smooth, round pebbles, which lie
above the line of the tide on a shore covered with shingles. Above me
rose a dark, frowning rock, the chilly shadow of which lay across me.
Without lifting my head I could see the water on a level with me, but it
did not look on a level; its bright crested waves seemed swelling upward
to the sky, ready to pour over me and bury me beneath them. I was very
faint, and sick, and giddy. The ground felt as if it were about to sink
under me. My eyelids closed languidly when I did not keep them open by
an effort; and my head ached, and my brain swam with confused fancies.
After some time, and with some difficulty, I comprehended what had
happened to me, and recollected that it was already past mid-day, and
Mrs. Tardif would be waiting for me. I attempted to stand up, but an
acute pain in my foot compelled me to desist. I tried to turn myself
upon the pebbles, and my left arm refused to help me. I could not check
a sharp cry of suffering as my left hand fell back upon the stones on
which I was lying. My fall had cost me something more than a few
minutes' insensibility and an aching head. I had no more power to move
than one who is bound hand and foot.
After a few vain efforts I lay quite still again, trying to deliberate
as well as I could for the pain which racked me. I reckoned up, after
many attempts in which first my memory failed me, and then my faculty of
calculation, what the time of the high tide would be, and how soon
Tardif would come home. As nearly as I could make out, it would be high
water in about two hours. Tardif had set off at low water, as his boat
had been anchored at the foot of the rock, where the ladder hung; but
before starting he had said something about returning at high tide, and
running up his boat on the beach of our little bay. If he did that, he
must pass close by me. It was Saturday morning, and he was not in the
habit of staying out late on Saturdays, that he might prepare for the
services of the next day. I might count, then, upon the prospect of him
running the boat into the bay, and finding me there in about two hours'
time.
It took me a very long time to make out all this, for every now and then
my brain seemed to lose its power for a while, and every thing whirled
about me. Especially there was that awful sensation of sinking down,
down through the pebbles into some chasm that was bottomless. I had
never either felt pain or fainted before, and all this alarmed me.
Presently I began to listen to the rustle of the pebbles, as the rising
tide flowed over them and fell back again, leaving them all ajar and
grating against one another--strange, gurgling, jangling sound that
seemed to have some meaning. It was very cold, and a creeping moisture
was oozing up from the water. A vague wonder took hold of me as to
whether I was really above the line of the tide, for, now the March
tides were come, I did not know how high their flood was. But I thought
of it without any active feeling of terror or pain. I was numbed in body
and mind. The ceaseless chime of the waves, and the regularity of the
rustling play of the pebbles, seemed to lull and soothe me, almost in
spite of myself. Cold I was, and in sharp pain, but my mind had not
energy enough either for fear or effort. What appeared to me most
terrible was the sensation, coming back time after time, of sinking,
sinking into the fancied chasm beneath me.
I remember also watching a spray of ivy, far above my head, swaying and
waving about in the wind; and a little bird, darting here and there with
a brisk flutter of its tiny wings, and a chirping note of satisfaction;
and the cloud drifting in soft, small cloudlets across the sky. These
things I saw, not as if they were real, but rather as if they were
memories of things that had passed before my eyes many years before.
At last--- whether years or hours only had gone by, I could not then
have told you--I heard the regular and careful beat of oars upon the
water, and presently the grating of a boat's keel upon the shingle, with
the rattle of a chain cast out with the grapnel. I could not turn round
or raise my head, but I was sure it was Tardif, and that he did not yet
see me, for he was whistling softly to himself. I had never heard him
whistle before.
"Tardif!" I cried, attempting to shout, but my voice sounded very weak
in my own ears, and the other sounds about me seemed very loud. He went
on with his unlading, half whistling and half humming his tune, as he
landed the nets and creel on the beach.
"Tardif!" I called again, summoning all my strength, and raising my head
an inch or two from the hard pebbles which had been its resting-place.
He paused then, and stood quite still, listening. I knew it, though I
could not see him. I ran the fingers of my right hand through the loose
pebbles about me, and his ear caught the slight noise. In a moment I
heard his strong feet coming across them toward me.
"Mon Dieu! mam'zelle," he exclaimed, "what has happened to you?"
I tried to smile as his honest, brown face bent over me, full of alarm.
It was so great a relief to see a face like his after that long, weary
agony, for it had been agony to me, who did not know what bodily pain
was like. But in trying to smile I felt my lips drawn, and my eyes
blinded with tears.
"I've fallen down the cliff," I said, feebly, "and I am hurt."
"Mon Dieu!" he cried again. The strong man shook, and his hand trembled
as he stooped down and laid it under my head to lift it up a little. His
agitation touched me to the heart, even then, and I did my best to speak
more calmly.
"Tardif," I whispered, "it is not very much, and I might have been
killed. I think my foot is hurt, and I am quite sure my arm is broken."
Speaking made me feel giddy and faint again, so I said no more. He
lifted me in his arms as easily and tenderly as a mother lifts up her
child, and carried me gently, taking slow and measured strides up the
steep slope which led homeward. I closed my eyes, glad to leave myself
wholly in his charge, and to have nothing further to dread; yet moaning
a little, involuntarily, whenever a fresh pang of pain shot through me.
Then he would cry again, "Mon Dieu!" in a beseeching tone, and pause for
an instant as if to give me rest. It seemed a long time before we
reached the farm-yard gate, and he shouted, with a tremendous voice, to
his mother to come and open it. Fortunately she was in sight, and came
toward us quickly.
He carried me into the house, and laid me down on the _lit de
fouaille_--a wooden frame forming a sort of couch, and filled with dried
fern, which forms the principal piece of furniture in every farm-house
kitchen in the Channel Islands. Then he cut away the boot from my
swollen ankle, with a steady but careful touch, speaking now and then a
word of encouragement, as if I were a child whom he was tending. His
mother stood by, looking on helplessly and in bewilderment, for he had
not had time to explain my accident to her.
But for my arm, which hung helplessly at my side, and gave me
excruciating pain when he touched it, it was quite evident he could do
nothing.
"Is there nobody who could set it?" I asked, striving very hard to keep
calm.
"We have no doctor in Sark now," he answered. "There is no one but
Mother Renouf. I will fetch her."
But when she came she declared herself unable to set a broken limb. They
all three held a consultation over it in their own dialect; but I saw by
the solemn shaking of their heads, and Tardif's troubled expression,
that it was entirely beyond her skill to set it right. She would
undertake my sprained ankle, for she was famous for the cure of sprains
and bruises, but my arm was past her? The pain I was enduring bathed my
face with perspiration, but very little could be done to alleviate it.
Tardif's expression grew more and more distressed.
"Mam'zelle knows," he said, stooping down to speak the more softly to
me, "there is no doctor nearer than Guernsey, and the night is not far
off. What are we to do?"
"Never mind, Tardif," I answered, resolving to be brave; "let the women
help me into bed, and perhaps I shall be able to sleep. We must wait
till morning."
It was more easily said than done. The two old women did their best, but
their touch was clumsy and their help slight, compared to Tardif's. I
was thoroughly worn out before I was in bed. But it was a great deal to
find myself there, safe and warm, instead of on the cold, hard pebbles
on the beach. Mother Renouf put my arm to rest upon a pillow, and bathed
and fomented my ankle till it felt much easier.
Never, never shall I forget that night. I could not sleep; but I suppose
my mind wandered a little. Hundreds of times I felt myself down on the
shore, lying helplessly, while great green waves curled themselves over,
and fell just within reach of me, ready to swallow me up, yet always
missing me. Then I was back again in my own home in Adelaide, on my
father's sheep-farm, and he was still alive, and with no thought but how
to make every thing bright and gladsome for me; and hundreds of times I
saw the woman who was afterward to be my step-mother, stealing up to the
door and trying to get in to him and me. Sometimes I caught myself
sobbing aloud, and then Tardif's voice, whispering at the door to ask
how mam'zelle was, brought me back to consciousness. Now and then I
looked round, fancying I heard my mother's voice speaking to me, and I
saw only the wrinkled, yellow face of his mother, nodding drowsily in
her seat by the fire. Twice Tardif brought me a cup of tea, freshly
made. I could not distinctly made out who he was, or where I was, but I
tried to speak loudly enough for him to hear me thank him.
I was very thankful when the first gleam of daylight shone into my room.
It seemed to bring clearness to my brain.
"Mam'zelle," said Tardif, coming to my side very early in his
fisherman's dress, "I am going to fetch a doctor."
"But it is Sunday," I answered faintly. I knew that no boatman put out
to sea willingly on a Sunday from Sark; and the last fatal accident,
being on a Sunday, had deepened their reluctance.
"It will be right, mam'zelle," he answered, with glowing eyes. "I have
no fear."
"Do not be long away, Tardif," I said, sobbing.
"Not one moment longer than I can help," he replied.