HOW THEY LAID THE DEVIL BY THE HEELS
When it began to be noised abroad that Gard was going to and fro across
the Coupée, even by night, as if nothing had ever happened there, the
Sark men shrugged their shoulders and said, “Pardie!--sooner him than
me--oui-gia!”
It was obviously necessary, however, that this should be known. Even the
cormorant does not fish where fish are never found.
But when he went to and fro by night, he went mailed--according to the
Doctor’s ideas--and armed--according to the Sénéchal’s; and each night
the Doctor and the Sénéchal went quietly down, some time in advance, and
lay hidden on the headlands with their guns, and never took their eyes
off him and all his surroundings, while he was in sight.
And Gard, in nearing the Little Sark cutting, always kept carefully to
the right-hand side of the path, though it was somewhat crumbly there
and had fallen away down the slope towards Grande Grève. For he had gone
cautiously over the ground beforehand, and decided that if there was any
possibility of being knocked overboard unawares, he would prefer to go
over the much gentler slope on the right, where one might even at a
pinch find lodgment among the rubble and bushes, than over the sheer
fall into Coupée Bay, where you could drop a stone almost to the shingle
below.
Nance knew nothing whatever of the matter, or she would undoubtedly and
most reasonably have had something to say about it. But knowledge of it
could only upset her, and so perhaps himself, and he had carefully kept
it from her. Little Sark, moreover, was more isolated than ever by
reason of the Coupée mystery, and word of his goings and comings--save
such as had La Closerie for their object in the day-time--never reached
her.
They were in grievous sorrow down there over Bernel. Gard still preached
hope, but each day’s delay in its realisation seemed to them to make it
the more unlikely, and their hearts were very sore.
Julie had gone about her work for days after Gard’s return like a bereft
tigress. Then one morning she locked the door of her house, put the key
in her pocket, and took the cutter for Guernsey; and none regretted her
going.
And, as it turned out, though that had not been her intention at the
time, it was the last Sark was to see of her. Rumours reached them later
of her marriage to a fellow-countryman, with whom she had gone to
France. The one thing they knew for certain was that she never came back
to La Closerie, and after due interval, and consequent on other matters,
they broke open the door and resumed possession of the house.
Night after night Gard slowly crossed the Coupée, lingered in its
shadows, went on into Little Sark, and came lingering back.
And night after night the Doctor and the Sénéchal lay in the heather of
the headlands, guns in hand, waiting for something that never came, and
then going stiffly home to one or other of their houses, to lubricate
their joints and console their disappointment with hot punch and much
tobacco.
“I’m afraid it’s no go,” was the Doctor’s grudging verdict at last, on
the fourteenth blank night.
“Let’s keep on,” said Gard. “Things generally happen just when you don’t
expect them.”
“That’s so,” grunted the Sénéchal. And they decided to keep on.
Fortunately, the nights were warm and mostly fine. When neither moon nor
stars afforded him light enough for a safe crossing, he took a lantern,
so that no one who desired to knock him on the head need miss the chance
for lack of seeing him.
And when, after their lonely waiting, the watchers in the heather saw
the lantern come joggling down the steep cutting from Sark, they braced
themselves for eventualities, and hefted their guns, and pricked up
their ears and made ready.
And when it had wavered slowly along the path between the great pits of
darkness on either hand, and had gone joggling on into Little Sark, they
sank back into their formes with each his own particular exclamation,
and lay waiting till the light came back.
Times of tension and endurance which told upon them all, but bore most
heavily on Gard, since the onslaught, when it came, must fall upon him,
and the absolute ignorance as to how and when and whence it might come,
kept every nerve within him strung like a fiddle-string.
It was the eeriest experience he had ever had, that nightly trip across
the Coupée;--bad enough when moon or stars afforded him vague and
distorted glimpses of his ghostly surroundings:--ten times worse when
the flicker of his lantern barely kept him to the path, and the broken
gleams ran over the rugged edges and tumbled into the black gulfs at the
sides;--when every starting shadow might be a murderer leaping out upon
him, every foot of the walling darkness the murderer’s cover, and every
step he took a step towards death.
A trip, I assure you, that not many men would have been capable of. For
it did not by any means end with the Coupée. When he got to bed of a
night, and fell asleep at last, he was still crossing the Coupée with
his joggling lantern all night long, and suffered things in dreams
compared with which even his actual experiences were but holiday jaunts.
And at times these grisly imaginings came back upon him as he actually
walked the narrow path next night, and it was all he could do to keep
his head and not fling the lantern into the depths of the pit and follow
it.
They were all getting exceedingly weary of the whole business; indeed,
it was getting on all their nerves in a way which threatened
consequences, when, mercifully, the end came--suddenly, not at all as
they had looked for it, quite outside all their expectation.
It was one of the shrouded nights. The Doctor and the Sénéchal, flat in
the heather, saw the lantern issue from the Sark cutting and come
joggling towards them. They heard a snort of surprise behind them, but
gave it no special heed. The Sénéchal grinned briefly at remembrance of
his fright when the beast snuffled down his neck that other night.
Then, this is what happened.
Gard--his lantern in his left hand, and the Sénéchal’s father’s
“dunderbush” in his right--his eyes pinching spooks out of every inch of
the black wall about him, and every string at its tightest--had reached
the crumbly bit of path near the Little Sark side, when, like a clap of
thunder out of a blue sky, the black silence of the cutting vomited
uproar--the wild clang and beat of what sounded, in that hollow space,
like the trampling of a thousand dancing hoofs--shrill neighings and
whinnyings and screamings, all blended into an indescribable and
blood-curdling clamour that gashed the night like an outrage.
And then, before even he had time to wonder, the great white stallion
was upon him--dancing on its hind legs on that narrow path like an
acrobat, towering above him to twice his own height, striking savagely
down at him with its great front feet, screaming like a fiend.
He had no time to think. His left arm and the lantern went up with the
natural instinct of defence. Just one glimpse he got--and never forgot
it--of vicious white eyes and teeth, flapping red nostrils, wild-flying
hair, and huge pawing feet descending on him, with the dirty white hair
splaying out all round them as they came down. Then his right hand went
up also, and he fired full into all these things. The lantern and the
blunderbuss went spinning into the gulf, the great feet beat him to the
ground, and rose and jabbed down at him with all the vicious might that
lay behind them--the savage white muzzle shrilling its blood-curdling
screams of triumph all the while--and all this in the space of a second.
“Good God!” cried the Doctor, craning over the eastern bank of the
cutting, but fearful of firing into the turmoil lest he should hit Gard,
so dropped himself bodily over on to the path.
Then the Sénéchal’s Sark eyes saw the great white head, with its flying
veil of hair, as it towered up for another vicious jab at the fallen
man, and he emptied both barrels of his gun into it.
A wild scream that shrilled along the night and woke Plaisance and Clos
Bourel and Vauroque, and the great white devil reared to his fullest
with wildly beating forefeet, toppled over backwards, and disappeared
with one hideous thud and a final crash on the shingle of Coupée Bay.
It was worse than they had ever dreamed--as bad almost as some of Gard’s
own nightmares.
“Good God! Good God! Good God!” babbled the Doctor, as he groped in the
dark for what might be left of their unfortunate decoy.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” gasped the Sénéchal, with catching
breath and shaking legs, as he ran round to join him in the search.
But there was no sign of Gard.
“Run, man!--Plaisance--a light!” jerked the Sénéchal.
“I can’t see,” groaned the Doctor.
“I’ll go!” and he set off at the best pace his years and his shaking
legs could compass.
Plaisance was standing at its doors, trembling still at that fearsome
cry, and wondering if it was, perchance, the last trump.
At sight of the panting figure coming up from the Coupée, it scuttled
and banged the doors tight. “Open! Open, you fools!” cried the
Sénéchal, and flung himself against the first door, while those inside,
under the sure belief that they were keeping out the devil, heaped
themselves against it to prevent him.
“Dolts! Idiots! Fools!” he cried. “It’s me--the Sénéchal. I want your
help!” and at that a man peeped out from the next door to make sure this
was not just another wile of the devil.
“A lantern! Quick!” ordered the Sénéchal. “And a blanket and a rope--and
get ready a bed for a wounded man. Come you with me and help!”
“Mais, mon Gyu----!” began the man.
“We’ve killed the devil, and the Doctor’s down there with him----”
“But we don’t want him here, M. le Sénéchal,” quavered a woman’s voice,
in terror.
“Fools! It’s Mr. Gard that is hurt. The devil’s down in Coupée Bay, and
we’ve killed him for you.”
“Ah then, Gyu marchi! Here’s a blanket--and the lantern--rope’s in barn.
You get a bed ready,” to the woman, and they went off towards the
Coupée.
And mighty glad the Doctor was to see them coming. He had begun to fear
the Sénéchal had lost his head and made a bolt for home.
He had been sitting under the bank of the cutting as the surest way of
keeping out of one or other of the black gulfs. But the interval had
given him time to recover himself, and he jumped up at once, all ready
for business, and hailed them.
“Down this side, I think,” he said, and they swung the lantern over the
Grande Grève slope below the bit of crumbly pathway.
“Le velas!” said Thomas Carré, and handed the lantern to the Sénéchal,
and let himself heavily over the side, and groped his way down to the
motionless form among the bramble bushes.
“Pardie, he is dead, I do think!” as he bent over it.
“Let’s see!” said the Doctor’s quick voice at his elbow. “Hand down the
light;” and the Sénéchal waited above in grievous anxiety.
“Not dead,” said the Doctor at last. “Stunned and badly knocked about.
He’ll come round. Now, how are we to get him up?”
“Here’s a blanket--and a rope.”
“Good! The blanket!... So!... Now--gently, my man!... Got it, Sénéchal?
Right! Ease him down on to the path. That’s right! Give me a hand, will
you? My legs aren’t as limber as they used to be. Now we’ll get him on
to a bed and see what the damage is;” and they set off slowly for
Plaisance.
“My God, Sénéchal! That passed belief! To think of our never thinking of
that infernal brute!” said the Doctor, as they stumbled slowly along in
the joggling light.
“He was possessed of the devil, without a doubt. That last scream of his
when he got my two bullets--”
“’T woke us,” said Carré. “And we wondered what was up. What was it,
then, monsieur?”
“That devil of a white stallion of Le Pelley’s. It was him killed Tom
Hamon and Peter Mauger, and he tried to kill Mr. Gard. We’ve been on
this job for weeks past, while you were all sleeping in your beds.”
“Mon Gyu! and we none of us knew anything about it till we heard yon
scream! And he’s dead----”
“He’s dead--unless he’s the devil,” said the Sénéchal sententiously.