A RESURRECTION INDEED
"The night is long that never finds the day."--_Macbeth_
The shaft of the old lead-mine down which Christian leaped was
forty-five feet deep, yet he was not killed; he was not even hurt. At
the bottom were fifteen feet of water, and this had broken his dreadful
fall. On coming to the surface, one stroke in the first instant of dazed
consciousness had landed him on a narrow ledge of rock that raked
downward with the seam. But what was his position when he realized it?
It seemed to be worse than death itself; it was a living death; it was
life in the arms of death; it was burial in an open grave. He heard
steps overhead, and in the agony of fear he shouted. But the steps went
by like a swift breath of wind, and no one answered. Then he reflected
that these must have been the footsteps of the police. Thank God they
had not heard his voice. To be rescued by them must have been ruin more
terrible than all. Doubtless they knew of his share in to-night's
attempted crime. Knowing this they must know by what fatality he was
buried here. Christian now realized that death encircled him on every
side. To remain in this pit was death; to be lifted out of it was death
no less surely. To escape was hopeless. He looked up at the sky. It was
a small square patch of leaden gray against the impenetrable blackness
of his prison walls.
Standing on the ledge of rock, and steadying himself with one hand, he
lifted the other stealthily upward to feel the sides of the shaft. They
were of rock and were precipitous, but had rugged projecting pieces on
which it was possible to lay hold. As he grasped one of these, a
sickening pang of hope shot through him and wounded him worse than
despair. But it was swift; it was gone in an instant. The piece of rock
gave way in his hand and tumbled into the water below him with a hollow
splash! The sides of the shaft were of a crumbling stone.
Now, indeed, he knew how hopeless was his plight. He dare not cry for
help. He must stand still as death in this deep tomb. To attract
attention would of itself be death. To remain down the shaft would also
be certain death. To climb to the surface was impossible. Christian's
heart sank. His position was terrible.
This conflict of soul did not last long. The heart soon clung to the
nearest hope. Cry for help he must; be dragged out of this grave he
should, let the issue be what it could or would. To lie here and die was
not human. To live in the living present was the first duty, the first
necessity, be the price of life no less than future death.
Christian reflected that the police, when he heard their footsteps, had
been running to Lockjaw Creek. It would take them five minutes to reach
it. When they got there and saw the boats on the shingle they would know
that their men had escaped them. Then they would hasten back. In ten
minutes they would pass the mouth of the shaft again. Five of these ten
minutes must have gone already. If he were to be rescued he must know
nearabouts when they ought to return, so that he might shout when they
were within hail. He remembered that their footsteps had gone from him
like the wind. The long shaft and sixty feet of dull dead rock and earth
had carried them off in an instant.
Christian began to reckon the moments. His thoughts came too fast. He
knew they must deceive him as to time. Minutes in this perilous position
might count with him for hours. He took out his watch, meaning to listen
for the beat of its seconds. The watch had stopped. No doubt it was full
of water. Christian's heart beat loud enough. Then he began to
count--one, two, three. But his mind was in a whirl. He lost his
reckoning. He found that he had stopped counting and forgotten the
number. Whether five minutes or fifty had passed he could not be sure.
Hark! He heard something overhead. Were they footsteps, those thuds that
fell on the ear like the first rumble of a distant thunder-cloud? Yes,
some one was near him. Now was his time to call, but his tongue was
cleaving to his mouth. Then he heard words spoken at the mouth of the
shaft. They rumbled down to him like words shouted through a hollow
black pillar.
"Here, men," said one, "let's tumble him into the lead mine. No harm
will it do him now, poor craythur."
But another voice, laden with the note of fearful agony, cried, "No, no,
no!"
"We must do something. No time to lose now. The fac's is agen us. Let's
make a slant for it, anyway. Lift again--up!"
Christian shuddered at the sound of human voices. Buried, as he was,
sixty feet beneath the earth, they came to him like the voice that the
wind might make on a tempestuous night if, as it reached your ear, it
whispered words and fled away.
The men were gone. Christian's blood was chilled. What had happened? Was
some one dead? Who was it? Christian shuddered at the thought of what
might have occurred if the dead body had been tossed over him into the
pit. Had the police overstepped their duty? _Were_ they the police? Did
he not remember one of the voices--or both? Christian's entempest soul
was overwhelmed with agony. He could not be sure that in very truth he
was conscious of anything that occurred.
Time passed--he knew not how long or short--and again he heard voices
overhead. They were not the voices that he had heard before.
"They have escaped us," said one. "Their boats are gone from the creek
now."
These, then, were the police; and, with a fresh flood of agony,
Christian realized that the other men had been his friends. What
fatality had prevented him from crying aloud to the only persons on
earth who could, in very truth, have rescued and saved him?
The voices above were dying away. "Stop!" cried Christian. Despair made
him brave; fear made him fearless. But none answered. Then he was
conscious that a footstep approached the top of the shaft. Had he been
heard? Now he prayed to God that he had not.
"What a gulf," said one. "Lucky we didn't tumble down. The young woman
warned us, you remember."
There was a short laugh at the mouth of Christian's open grave. He did
not call again. The voices ceased, the footsteps died off.
He was alone once more; but death was with him. The police had gone.
Kisseck and his men had gone. They were no doubt out at sea by this time
if, as the police said, the boats had been taken from the creek.
Christian remembered now that the voices he had heard first were those
of Corteen and Danny Fayle. This recovered consciousness enabled him to
recall the fearful memory of what had been said. Cold as he was, the
sweat stood in big drops on Christian's forehead. One of their own men
was dead; one of the companions in this night's black adventure. A bad
man perhaps, or perhaps merely a weak victim, but his own associate,
whatever else he had been.
Now, if he were to escape from his death in life it must be by his own
unaided energies alone. It was best so; best that he should climb to the
top without help, or be lost without detection. After all, it was a
superior Power that had governed this dread eventuality and silenced his
impotent tongue.
An hour passed. The wind began to rise. At first Christian felt nothing
of it as he stood in his deep tomb. He could hear its thin hiss over the
mouth of the shaft, and that was all. But presently the hiss deepened to
a sough. Christian had often heard of the wind's sob. It was a reality,
and no metaphor, as he listened to the wind now. The wind began to
descend. With a great swoop it came down the shaft, licked the walls,
gathered voice from the echoing water at the bottom, struggled for
escape, roared like a caged beast and was once more sucked up to the
surface with a noise like the breaking of a huge wave over a reef. The
tumult of the wind in the shaft was hard to bear, but when it was gone
it was the silence that seemed to be deafening.
Sometimes the gusts were laden with the smoke of burning gorse. It came
from the fire that Danny had kindled on the head of the Poolvash. Would
the fire reach the pit, encircle it, descend in it?
Then the rain began to fall. Christian knew this by the quick monotonous
patter overhead. But no rain touched him. It was being driven aslant by
the wind, and fell only against the uppermost part of the walls of the
shaft. Sometimes a soft thin shower fell over him. It was like the spray
from a cataract except that the volume of water from which it came was
above and not beneath him.
Christian had begun to contemplate measures for escape. That unexpected
softness of the rock which had at first appalled him began now to give
him some painful glimmerings of hope. If the sides of the shaft had been
uniformly of the gray slate rock of the district, the ledge he had laid
hold of would not have crumbled in his hand. Being soft, there must be a
vein of sandstone running across the shaft. Christian's bewildered
memory recalled what he must have heard many times of the rift of
redstone which lay under the headland south of Peel. If this vein were
but deep enough, his safety was assured. He could cut niches into it
with a knife, and so, perhaps, after infinite pain and labor, reach the
surface. Steadying himself with one hand, Christian felt in his pockets
for his knife. It was not there! Now death indeed was certain. Despair
began to take hold of him.
He was icy cold and feverishly hot at intervals. His clothes were wet;
the water still dripped from them, and fell at intervals into the hidden
tarn beneath in hollow drops.
But not so soon is hope conquered, when it is hope of life. Not to hope
now would have been not to fear. Christian remembered that he had a pair
of small scissors attached to a button-hook. When searching for his
knife he had felt it in his pocket, and spurned it for resembling the
knife to the touch of his nervous fingers. Now it was his sole
instrument. He found it again, opened it, and with this paltry help he
set himself to his work of escape from this dark, deep tunnel that stood
upright.
The night twas wearing on; hour after hour passed. The wind dropped; the
rain ceased to patter overhead. Christian toiled on step over step;
resting sometimes on the largest and firmest of the projecting ledges,
he looked up at the sky. Its leaden gray had changed to a dark blue
studded with stars. The moon arose and shone a little way down his
prison, lighting all the rest. He knew it must be early morning. One
star, a large, full globe of light, twinkled directly above him. His eye
was fascinated by that star. He sat long and watched it. He turned again
and again in his toilsome journey to look at it. Was it a symbol of
hope? Pshaw! Christian twisted back to his work. When he looked for the
star again it was gone. It had moved beyond his ken; it had passed out
of range of his narrow spot of heaven. Somehow it had been a mute
companion. Christian's heart sank yet lower in his cheerless solitude.
Still he toiled on. His strength was far spent. The moon died off, and
the stars went out one after one. Then a deep, impenetrable cloud of
darkness overspread the little sky above. Christian knew it must be the
darkness that precedes the dawn. He had reached a ledge of rock wider
than any that were beneath it. Clearly enough a wooden rafter had lain
along it.
Christian rested and looked up. At that moment he heard the light patter
of four little feet overhead, and a poor stray sheep, a lamb of last
spring's flock, bleated down the shaft. The melancholy call of the lost
creature in that dismal place touched Christian deeply. What was it that
made the tears start to his eyes and his whole soul shake with a new
agony? The outcast lamb wandering over this trackless waste in the night
had touched an old scar in Christian's heart, and made the wound bleed
afresh. Was it strange that in that hour his thoughts turned
involuntarily to little Ruby Cregeen? The darling child, caressed by the
salt breath of the sea, and with the sunlight dancing in her eyes and
glistening on her ruby lips, had she then anything in common with the
little wanderer that sent up her pitiful cry into the night? Too much,
too much, for the man who heard it, and he was buried in a living grave,
with the tombstones of dead joys rising everywhere around, with the
fire that had for years been kept close burning now most of all. Oh,
these dead joys, they want the deepest grave.
Christian turned again to his weary task. To live was a duty, and live
he must. His fingers were chilled to the bone. His clothes still clung
like damp cerements to his body. The meagre blades of the scissors were
worn short. They could not last long. Christian rose to his feet on the
ledge of rock and plunged the scissors into the blank wall above him.
Ah! what fresh disaster was this? His hand went deep into soft earth;
the vein of rock had finished, and all that was above it must be loose,
uncertain mold!
He gasped at the discovery. A minute since life had looked very dear.
Must he abandon his hope of it after all? He paused and reflected. As
nearly as he could remember, he had made twenty niches in the rock.
Hence he must be fully thirty-five feet from the water, and ten from the
surface. Only ten feet, and then--freedom! Yet these ten seemed to
represent an impossibility. To ascend by holes dug deep in the soft
earth was a perilous enterprise. A great clod of soil might at any
moment give way above or beneath him, and then he would be plunged once
more into the pit. If he fell from the side of the shaft, he would be
more likely than at first to strike one of the projecting ledges, and be
killed before he reached the water. There was nothing left but to wait
for the dawn. Perhaps the daylight would reveal some less hazardous
method of escape.
Slowly the dull, dead, impenetrable blackness above him was lifted off.
It was as though a spirit breathed on the night and it fled away. When
the woolly hue of morning dappled his larger sky, Christian could hear
the slow beat of the waves on the shore. The coast rose up before his
vision then, silent, solemn, alone with the dawn. The light crept into
his prison-house. He looked down at the deep black tarn.
And now hope rose in his heart again. Overhead he saw timbers running
around and across the shaft. These had been used to bank up the earth
and to make two grooves in which the ascending and descending cages had
once worked. Christian lifted up his soul in thankfulness. The world was
once more full of grace, even for him. He could climb from stay to stay,
and so reach the surface.
Catching one of the stays in his uplifted hands, he swung his knees on
to another. One stage was accomplished, but how stiff were his joints
and how sinewless his fingers! Another and another stage was reached,
and then four feet and no more were between him and the gorse that waved
in the light of the risen sun across the mouth of his night-long tomb.
But the rain of years had eaten into these timbers. In some places they
crumbled and were rotten. God! how the one on which he rested creaked
under him at that instant. Another minute, and then the toilsome journey
would be over. Another minute, and his dead self would be left behind
him, buried forever in this grave! Then there would be a resurrection in
very truth! Yes, truly, God helping him.
Christian had swimming eyes and a big heart as he raised himself on to
the topmost stay that crossed the shaft, and clutched the long tussacs
of the clinging gorse. Then, at the last spring, he heard a
creak--another--louder--the timbers were breaking beneath his feet. At
the same moment he heard a half-stifled cry--saw a face--it was Mona's
face--there was a breathless instant of bewildered consciousness.
In another moment Christian was standing on the hillside, close locked
in Mona's arms.