HOW ONE CAME TO HIM LIKE AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN
Nance was standing by the shelter, and even in the darkness he could
tell that she was shaking, in spite of her previous vigorous incitement
to defence.
“You--you didn’t kill any of them?” she asked anxiously.
“No, dear. I warned them off and fired into the water to show them I was
armed.”
“I was afraid. But, there were two shots.”
“One of them fired back the next time I spoke, but I was expecting it.”
“They are wicked, wicked men, and cruel.”
“They are mistaken, that’s all. But it comes to much the same thing, and
I don’t see,” he said despondently, “how we are ever to prove it to
them.”
“They will come again.”
“Yes, they are to come back with every man and every boat in the Island.
I shall have my hands full. Are there more than these two places where
they can land?”
“Not good places, and these only when the sea is right. But angry
men--and ready to shoot you--oh, it is wicked--”
“We must hope the sea will keep them off, and that something may turn up
to throw some light on the other matter,” he said, trying to comfort
her, though, in truth, the outlook was not hopeful, and he feared
himself that his time might be short.
“I will stop here and help you,” she said, with sudden vehemence. “They
shall not have you. They shall not! They are wicked, crazy men,” and the
little cloaked figure shook again with the spirit that was in it.
“Dear!” he said, putting his arm round her, and drawing her close. “You
must not stop. They must not know you have been here. I do not know what
the end will be. We are in God’s hands, and we have done no wrong. But
if ... if the worst comes, you will remember all your life, dear, that
to one man you were as an angel from heaven. Nance! Nance! Oh, my dear,
how can I tell you all you are to me!”--and as he pressed her to him,
the bare white arms stole out of the cloak and clasped him tightly round
the neck.
“But how are you going to get back, little one? You cannot possibly swim
that Race again?” he asked presently, holding her still in his arms and
looking down at her anxiously.
“Yes, I can swim,” she said valiantly. “I knew it would be worse than
usual, and I brought these”--and she slipped from his arms and groped on
the ground, and presently held up what felt to him in the darkness like
a pair of inflated bladders with a broad band between them. “And here is
a little bread and meat, all I could carry tied on to my head. We feared
you would be starving.”
“You should not have burdened yourself, dear. It might have drowned you.
And I have eggs--puffins’--”
“Ach!”
“They are better than nothing, and I beat them up with cognac. But are
you safe in the Race, Nance dear, even with those things?”
“You cannot sink. If Bernel had only taken them! But he laughed at them,
and now--”
He kissed her sobs away, but was full of anxiety at thought of her in
the rushing darkness of the Race.
“I will go with you,” he said eagerly, “and you will lend me your
bladders to get back with.”
“You would never get back to L’Etat in the dark”--and he knew that that
was true. “We of Sark can see, but you others--”
“I shall be in misery till I know you are all right,” he said anxiously.
“I will run home. My things are in the gorse above Brenière. And I will
get a lantern and come down by Brenière and wave it to you.”
“Will you do that? It will be like a signal from heaven,” he said
eagerly, “a signal from heaven waved by an angel from heaven.”
“And to-morrow I will go to the Vicar, and the Sénéchal, and the
Seigneur, if he has come home, and I will make them stop these wicked
men from coming here again.”
“Can they?”
“They shall. They must. They are the law and it is not right.”
“It is worth trying, at any rate,” he said cheerfully, as they reached
the eastern corner and struck down across his puffin-warren to the point
immediately opposite Brenière. But he had not much hope that the Vicar
and the Sénéchal and the Seigneur all combined would avail him, for the
men of Sark are a law unto themselves.
“But I’ve found another hiding-place, Nance, where they could never find
me.”
“Here?--on L’Etat?”
“Yes--inside. I’ll show you some time, perhaps, if--”
“Is this where you came ashore?” he asked, as she came to a stand on a
rough black shelf up which the waves hissed white and venomous.
“We--we always landed here when we swam across,” she said, with a little
break in her voice, as it came home to her again that Bernel would swim
the Race no more.
“Nance dear, don’t give up hope. He may come back yet.”
“I have only you left, and they want to kill you,” she said sadly.
“I wish I could come with you,” as the dark waters swirled below them.
“It feels terrible to let you go into that all alone.”
“It is nothing. The tide is dead slack, and I have these”--swinging the
bladders in her hand--“if I get tired. Oh, if Bern had only taken
them--”
“I will kneel on the ridge and pray for your safety till I see your
light. Dear, God keep you, and bless you for all your goodness and
courage!”
He strained her to him again, as if he could not let her go to that
colder embrace that awaited her below.
“I could kiss the very rocks you have stood on,” he said passionately.
She kissed him back and dropped the cloak, waited a second till a wave
had swirled by, then launched into the slack of it, and was gone.
He stood long, peering and listening into the darkness, but heard only
the welter of the water under the black ledges below, and its scornful
hiss as it seethed through the fringing sea-weeds.
Then at last he turned and climbed, slowly and heavily, up to the ridge;
for now he felt the strain of these last full hours, coming on top of
the longer strain of the storm; and this, and the lack of proper
feeding, made him feel weak and empty and weary. He knelt down there in
the darkness, with his face towards the Race where Nance was battling
with the hungry black waters, and he prayed for her safety as he had
never prayed for anything in his life before.
“_God keep her! God keep her! God keep her--and bring her safe to land!
O God, keep her, keep her, keep her, and bring her safe to land!_”
It was a monotonous little prayer, but all his heart was in it, and that
is all that makes a prayer avail. And when at last, from sheer
weariness, he sank down on to his heels in science, gazing earnestly out
into the blackness of the night, his heart prayed on though his lips no
longer moved.
Could anything have happened to her? Could the black waters have
swallowed her?
Anything might have happened to her. The waters might have swallowed
her, as they had Bernel.
The thoughts would surge up behind his prayer, but he prayed them
down--again and again--and clung to his prayer and his hope.
It seemed hours since they parted, since his last glimpse of her as the
black waters swallowed the slim white figure, and seemed to laugh
scornfully at its smallness and weakness.
“_Oh, Nance! Nance! God keep you! God keep you! God keep you! Dear one,
God keep you! God keep you! God keep you, and bring you safe to land_!”
He was numb with kneeling. If one had come behind him and cut off his
feet above the ankles, he would have felt no pain. He felt no bodily
sensation whatever. His body was there on the rock, but his heart was
out upon the black waters alongside Nance, struggling with her through
the belching coils, nerving her through the treacherous swirls. And his
soul--all that was most really and truly him--was agonizing in prayer
for her before the God to whom he had prayed at his mother’s knee, and
whom she had taught him to look to as a friend and helper in all times
of need.
He did not even stop--as he well might have done--to think that the
friend sought only in time of need might have reasonable ground for
complaint of neglect at other times.
He thought of nothing but that Nance was out there battling with the
black waters--that he could not lift a finger to help her--that all he
could do was to pray for her safety with all his heart and soul.
Then, after an age of this numb agony of waiting, a tiny bead of light
flickered on the outer darkness, as though Hope with a golden pin-point
had pricked the black curtain of despair, and let a gleam of her glory
peep through. It swung to and fro, and he fell forward with his face in
his ice-cold hands and sobbed, “Thank God! Thank God! She is safe! She
is safe!”
When he tried to get up, his legs gave way under him, and he had to sit
and wait till they recovered. And when at last he got under way along
the ridge, he stumbled like a drunken man.
He tangled his feet in the blanket and fell in a heap. He wondered
dimly where the cloak was--remembered Nance had worn it till she took to
the sea--and stumbled off through the dark again to find it. Nance had
worn it. To him it was sacred.
When he got back with it, he wrapped it round him and crept into his
shelter and slept like a dog.