Volume Two—Chapter Five.
A Retired Spot for a Bathe.
It was a cold grey morning as Colonel Mellersh and Richard Linnell went out on to the parade, quite unaware that a pair of dark eyes were watching from behind an upper blind; but the fact that each man carried a towel in his hand disarmed suspicion, and the owner of the eyes went back to the couch in her room as the gentlemen passed out of sight.
“I was afraid,” she said to herself softly. “Perhaps there was no truth in it after all.”
Meanwhile, the Colonel and Richard Linnell went briskly on past the pier, with no one yet astir upon the parade; but farther on there were boats putting out to sea, and fishermen carrying oars and baskets down to those lying on the shingle.
As they went on along the cliff, Fisherman Dick was down by his upturned boat, trying the pitch, to find out whether it was hardened, and hearing the voices, he looked up and saw the two men pass.
“Master Richard Linnell—the Colonel,” he said to himself. “Bathing, eh? Well, it’s lonesome enough out there.”
The mist hung over the sea, and the waves came in with a mournful sound upon the shore, the pebbles rattling together as they were driven up and rolled back with the retiring waters, sounding in the distance as if they were whispering together about the meeting that was about to take place a mile or so onward, beyond the chalk bluff, where the land trended inward, and formed a little bay.
Fisherman Dick found the bottom of his boat rather sticky, but he did not seem to be thinking about it, but to be putting that and that together.
“Master Richard Linnell give that Major Rockley an out and out good welting yonder in the cornfield, and if he’d been with him instead of that tother one, I should say there was going to be a fight with pistols; but I suppose it means a bit of a swim, and—”
Dick Miggles bent down over his boat, and seemed to be paying not the least heed, for just then he saw four people coming down the cliff path on to the beach, and as they passed he saw that they were Rockley, Sir Harry Payne, a gentleman he did not know, and the Major’s dragoon servant, James Bell, carrying something under his military cloak.
“It’s a fight,” said Dick Miggles, as they passed him, picking their way down over the shingle to the firmer ground, close to the water’s edge, where there were long stretches of sand, and it was better walking.
“Now, what shall I do?” said Fisherman Dick; “go and tell the constables? They’d be abed, and it would take me an hour to get back with them, and the mischief would be done before then. Anyhow, I’ll go and see what’s going on.”
By this time Mellersh and Linnell had passed out of sight along the shore, and the second party were a hundred yards away.
Fisherman Dick did not hesitate, but, going back up the cliff path, he reached the top, and walked swiftly along eastward for some distance. Then, throwing himself down, he crawled flat on the ground, taking off his hat and leaving it behind him.
In a few seconds he was at the edge of the cliff, where the soft shore turf ended, and the chalk was broken away, going sheer down perpendicularly to the shingle beach and rough rock débris that had fallen from time to time after undermining by the sea. As he expected, the two little parties were below.
“They’re going to fight, sure enough,” muttered the fisherman. “I may as well go and see fair. Where’ll they do it?”
He lay still for a few moments thinking.
“Why, they’ll make for the sand patch in Jollick’s Cove,” he said aloud. “Don’t know much about it, or they’d have took the path and the short cut and gone down the chalk steps.”
He smiled as some thought occurred to him, and, drawing back from the edge of the cliff, he crawled back to where the beaten path showed faintly, and where at intervals the turf had been cut away down to the chalk, and a white patch made, as a guide for travellers in the dark, lest they should stray from the slight sheep-track and go over the cliff to certain death.
Along this path Fisherman Dick ran at a brisk trot for quite a mile, while the cliff rose slightly into a bold bluff, but the fisherman did not climb this, but plunged down suddenly behind a clump of furze into a ravine where a slight path showed that there was a way to the shore.
He went down this a few yards, and then turned, took two great strides, climbed up the face of the ravine a little way, stepped behind a huge mass of chalk, went in and out among some débris from the cliff, and then stepped into what looked like a rain gully which led to an opening in the rock, forming a rough half hole, half cavern, with the light coming from the side through a large irregular opening, partly natural, partly reduced by the arrangement of blocks of chalk, so that there was plenty of room for a dozen men to be in shelter, and where, unseen, they had full view of the open sea for miles on either side, and of the smooth patch of sand in the little cove, fifty feet or so below.
“There, as long as they don’t shute up this way,” said the fisherman, “I shall be all right and can see them all. I hope young Linnell won’t be hurt. Don’t suppose he will, for pistols is mortal stupid tools to work with.”
Linnell and Mellersh came into sight soon after, and paused on reaching the sandy cove, a place admirably suited for the purpose in hand, for though from the rough look-out above, the shore could be commanded for some distance either way, those who occupied the sandy patch were hidden from either east or west.
“I’d have given something to have prevented this, Dick,” said Mellersh huskily; “but you were bound to meet him.”
“Yes,” said Richard gravely. “It was unavoidable. Hush! don’t talk to me. I’m firm now, and,”—he smiled as he spoke—“I want to do you justice.”
“Well,” said Sir Harry Payne, in a low voice, as the second party came upon the ground, “how do you feel now, Rockley? What do you mean to do?”
“To the man who struck me, and came between me and Claire Denville?”
“Yes.”
“I shall shoot him like a dog.”