THE DEATH CURRENT
The pool was still again, still as a sheet of glass, reflecting the
midnight glory of the moon. It was climbing high in the sky, and the
cloud-wreaths were mounting towards it as incense smoke from an altar.
The thick, black curtain that hung in the west was growing like a
monstrous shadow, threatening to overspread the whole earth.
Down on the silver beach, crouched on one of the rocks that bordered the
shining pool, Knight worked with fevered intensity to catch the magic of
the hour. The light was wonderful. The pool shone strangely, deeply
green; the rocks about it might have been delicately carved in ivory.
And across the pool, clear-cut against the utter darkness of the Spear
Point Rock, stood Aphrodite the Beautiful, clad in some green
translucent draperies, her black hair loose about her, her white arms
outstretched to the moonlight, her face--exquisite as a flower--upturned
to meet the glory. She was like a dream too wonderful to be true, save
for the passion that lived in her eyes. That was vivid, that was
poignant--the fire of sacrifice burning inwardly.
The man worked on as one driven by a ruthless force. His teeth were
clenched upon his lower lip. His hands were shaking, and yet he knew
that what he did was too superb for criticism. It was the work of
genius--the driving force within that would not let him pause to listen
to the wild urgings of his heart. That might come after. But this--this
power that compelled was supreme. While it gripped him he was not his
own master. He was, as he himself had said, a slave.
And while he worked at its behest, watching the wonderful thing that
inspiration was weaving by his hand, scarcely conscious of effort,
though the perspiration was streaming down his face, he whispered over
and over between his clenched teeth the title of the picture that was to
astonish the world--"The Goddess Veiled in Foam."
There was no foam as yet on the pool, but he remembered how two nights
before he had seen the breaking of the first wave that had turned it
into a seething cauldron of surf. That was what he wanted now--just the
first great wave washing over her exquisite feet and flinging its
garment of spray like a flimsy veil over her perfect form. He wanted
that as he wanted nothing else on earth. And then--then--he would catch
his dream, he would chain for ever the fairy vision that might never be
granted again.
There came a boom like a distant gunshot on the other side of the Spear
Point Rock, and again, but very far away, there sounded the tolling of
the bell beyond the reef. The man's heart gave a great leap. It was
coming!
In the same moment the girl's voice came to him across the pool,
mingling with the rushing of great waters.
"The tide is coming up fast. It won't be safe much longer."
"Don't move! Don't move!" he cried back almost frantically. "It is
absolutely safe. I will swim across and help you if you are afraid. But
wait--wait just a few moments more!"
She did not urge him. Her surrender had been too complete. Perhaps his
promise reassured her, or perhaps she did not fully realise the danger.
She waited motionless and the man worked on.
Again there came that sound that was like the report of a distant gun,
and the roaring of the sea swelled to tumult.
"Don't move! Don't move!" he cried again.
But she could not have heard him in the overwhelming rush of the sea.
There came a sudden dimness. A cloud had drifted over the moon, and
Knight looked up and cursed it with furious impatience. It passed, and
he saw her again--his vision, the goddess of his dream, still as the
rock behind her, yet splendidly alive. He bent himself again to his
work. Would that wave never come to veil her in sparkling raiment of
foam?
Ah! At last! The peace of the pool was shattered. A shining wave,
curved, green, transparent, gleamed round the corner, ran, swift as a
flame, along the rock, and broke with a thunderous roar in a torrent of
snow-white surf. In a moment the pool was a seething tumult of water,
and in that moment Knight saw his goddess as the artist in him had
yearned to see her, her beauty half-veiled and half-revealed in a
shimmering robe of foam.
The vision vanished. Another cloud had drifted over the moon. Only the
swirling water remained.
Again he lifted his head to curse the fate that baffled him, and as he
did so a hand came suddenly from the darkness behind and gripped him by
the shoulder. A voice that was like the angry bellow of a bull roared in
his ear.
What it said he did not hear; so amazed was he by the utter
unexpectedness of the attack. Before he had time to realise what was
happening, he was shaken with furious force and flung aside. He
fell--and his precious work fell with him--on the very edge of that
swirling pool....
Seconds later, when the moon gleamed out again, he was still frantically
groping for it on the stones. The roar of the sea was terrible and
imminent, like the roar of a destroying monster racing upon its prey,
and from the caves there came a hollow groaning as of chained spirits
under the earth.
The light flashed away again just as he spied his treasure on the brink
of the dashing water. He sprang to save it, intent upon naught else;
but in that instant there came a roar such as he had not heard before--a
sound so compelling, so nerve-shattering, that even he was arrested,
entrapped as it were by a horror of crashing elements that made him
wonder if all the fiends in hell were fighting for his soul. And, as he
paused, the swirl of a great wave caught him in the darkness like the
blow of a concrete thing, nearly flinging him backwards. He staggered,
for the first time stricken with fear, and then in the howling uproar of
that dreadful place there came to him like a searchlight wheeling
inwards the thought of the girl. The water receded from him, leaving him
drenched, almost dazed, but a voice within--an urgent, insistent
voice--clamoured that his safety was at stake, his life a matter of mere
moments if he lingered. This was the Death Current of which Rufus had
warned him only that afternoon. Had not the bell-buoy been tolling to
deaf ears for some time past? The Death Current that came like a tidal
wave! And nothing could live in it. The girl--surely the girl had been
washed off her ledge and overwhelmed in the flood before it had reached
him. Possibly Rufus would manage to save her, for that it was Rufus who
had so savagely sprung upon him he had no doubt; but he himself was
powerless. If he saved his own life it would be by a miracle. Had not
the fellow warned him that retreat by way of the cliff-path would be cut
off in thirty seconds when the tide raced up like that? And if he failed
to reach that, only the quicksand was left--the quicksand that dragged
a man down quicker than hell!
He set his teeth and turned his face to the cliff. A light was shining
half-way up it--that must come from the window of Rufus's cottage. He
took it as a beacon, and began to stumble through the howling darkness
towards it. He knew the cliff-path. He had come down it only that night
to make sure that there was no one spying upon them. The cottage had
been shut and dark then, the little garden empty. He had concluded that
Rufus had gone early to rest after a long day with the nets, and had
passed on securely to wait for Columbine on the edge of their magic
pool. But what he did not know was exactly where the cliff-path ran out
on to the beach. The opening was close to the Caves and sheltered by
rocks. Could he find it in this infernal darkness? Could he ever make
his way to it in time? With the waves crashing behind him he struggled
desperately towards the blackness of the cliffs.
The rocks under his feet were wet and slippery. He fought his way over
them, feeling as if a hundred demons were in league to hold him back.
The swirl of the incoming tide sounded in his ears like a monstrous
chant of death. Again and again he slipped and fell, and yet again he
dragged himself up, grimly determined to fight the desperate battle to
the last gasp. The thought of Columbine had gone wholly from him, even
as the thought of his lost treasure. Only the elemental desire of life
gripped him, vital and urgent, forcing him to the greatest physical
effort he had ever made. He went like a goaded animal, savage, stubborn,
fiercely surmounting every obstacle, driven not so much by fear as by a
furious determination to frustrate the fate that menaced him.
It must have been nearly a minute later that the moon shone forth again,
throwing gleaming streaks of brightness upon the mighty breakers that
had swallowed the magic pool. They were riding in past the Spear Point
in majestic and unending procession, and the rocks that surrounded the
pool were already deeply covered. The surf of one great wave was rushing
over the beach to the Caves, and the spray of it blew over Knight,
drenching him from head to foot. Desperately, by that passing gleam of
moonlight, he searched for the opening of the path, the foam of the
oncoming procession already swirling about his feet. He spied it
suddenly at length, and in the same instant something within him--could
it have been his heart?--dropped abruptly like a loosened weight to the
very depths of his being. The way of escape in that direction was
already cut off. In the darkness he had not taken a straight course, and
it was too late.
Wildly he turned--like a hunted animal seeking refuge. With great leaps
and gigantic effort, he made for the open beach. He reached it, reached
the loose dry sand so soon to be covered by the roaring tumult of great
waters. His eyes glared out over the level stretch that intervened
between the Spear Point Rock and the harbour quay. The tide would not be
over it yet.
He flung his last defiance to the fate that relentlessly hunted him as
he took the only alternative, and set himself to traverse the way of the
quicksand--that dragged a man down quicker than hell.