HOW SARK CRAVED BLOOD FOR BLOOD
Stephen Gard walked slowly down the road towards Plaisance in the lowest of spirits.
This strange people amongst whom he had fallen, possessed, in pre-eminent degree, what in these later times is known as the defects of its qualities.
Black sheep there were, of course, as there are in every community, who seemed all defects and possessed of no redeeming qualities whatever. But, taken as a whole, the men of Sark were simple, honest according to their lights, brave and hardy, very tenacious of their own ideas and their island rights, somewhat stubborn and easier to lead than to drive, and withal red-blooded, as the result of their ancestry, and given to a large despite of foreigners, in which category were included all unfortunates born outside the rugged walls of Sark.
He had done his best among them, both for their own interests and those of the mines, but no striving would ever make him other than a foreigner; and in the depression of spirit consequent on the trying experiences of the day, he gloomily pondered the idea of giving up his post and finding a more congenial atmosphere elsewhere.
Still, he was a Cornishman, and dour to beat. And, if he had incurred unreasonable dislike, he had also lighted on the virgin lode of Nance's love and trust, and that, he said to himself with a glow of gratitude, outweighed all else.
He had left the school-house at once when he had given his evidence, and had heard no more of what had taken place there. The bystanders had let him pass without any open opposition, but their faces had been hard and unsympathetic, and he recognized that life among them would be anything but a sunny road for some time to come.
If the people at Plaisance had told him to clear out and find another lodging he would not have been in the least surprised. But they had no such thought. In common with all who really got to know him, they had come to esteem and like him, and they had no reason to believe that he had had anything to do with Tom Hamon's death.
He had pondered these matters wearily till bed-time, and he turned in at last sick of himself, and Sark, and things generally. But his brain would not sleep, and the longer he lay and the more he tossed and turned, the wearier he grew.
Sleep seemed so impossible that he was half inclined to get up and dress and go out. The cool night air and the freshness of the dawn would be better than this sleepless unresting. Suddenly there came a sharp little tap on his window.
A bird, he thought, or a bat.
The tap came again—sharp and imperative.
He got up quietly and went to the window. The night was still dark. As he peered into it a hand came up again and tapped once more and he opened the window.
"Mr. Gard!"—in a sharp whisper.
"Nance! What is it, dear? Anything wrong?"
"I want you—quick."
"One minute!" and he hastily threw on his things and joined her outside.
"What is it, Nance?" he asked anxiously, wondering what new complication had arisen.
"I'll tell you as we go. Come!" and they were speeding noiselessly down the road to the Coupée.
There she took his hand, as once before, to lead him safely across, and her hand, he perceived, was trembling violently.
They were half way along the narrow path when the hollow way in front leading up into Little Sark resounded suddenly with the tramp of heavy feet.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" panted Nance, and he could feel her turn and look round like a hunted animal.
"Quick!" she whispered. "Behind here! and oh, grip tight!" and she knelt and crawled on hands and knees round the base of the nearest pinnacle.
In those days the pinnacles which buttress the Coupée were considerably higher and bulkier than they are now, and along their rugged flanks the adventurous or sorely-pressed might find precarious footing. But it was a nerve-racking experience even in the day-time when the eye could guide the foot. Now, in the ebon-black night, it was past thinking of.
Dazed by the suddenness and strangeness of the whole matter, and without an inkling of what it all meant, Gard clung like a fly to the bare rock and tried his hardest not to think of the sheer three hundred feet that lay between him and the black beach below.
In grim and menacing silence, save for the crunch of their heavy feet on the crumbling pathway, the men went past, a dozen or more, as it seemed to Gard. When the sound of them had died in the hollow on the Sark side, Nance whispered, "Quick now! quick!"
They crawled back into the roadway, and she took his hand in hers again which shook more than ever, and they sped away into Little Sark.
"Now tell me, Nance. What is it all about?" he panted, as she nipped through an opening in a green bank and led the way towards the eastern cliffs over by the Pot.
"Oh—it's you they want," she gasped, and he stopped instantly and stood, as though he would turn and go back.
"It is no use," she jerked emphatically, between breaths, and dragged impatiently at his arm. "You don't know our Sark men.... They do things first and are sorry after.... Bernel heard them planning it all.... The men from Sark were to meet these ones, and then—"
"But," he said angrily, "running away looks like—"
"No, no! Not here.... And it is only for a time. The truth will come out, but it would be too late if they had got you."
"What would they have done with me?"
"Oh—terrible things. They are madmen when they are angry."
He had yielded to her will, and they were speeding swiftly along the downs. The path was quite invisible to him. He tripped and stumbled at times on tangled roots of gorse and bracken, but she kept on swiftly and unerringly, as though the night were light about her.
"Where are you taking me?" he asked, as they crept past the miners' cottages on the cliff above Rouge Terrier.
"To Brenière.... To L'Etat.... Bernel went on to find a boat."
And presently they were out on the bald cliff-head, and slipping and sliding down it till they came to the ledge, below which Brenière spreads out on the water like a giant's hand.
Between her panting breaths Nance whistled a low soft note like the pipe of a sea-bird. A like sound came softly up from below, and slipping and stumbling again, they were on the beach among mighty boulders girt with dripping sea-weed.
Another low pipe out of the darkness, and they had found the boat and tumbled into it, wet and bruised, and breathless.
"Dieu merci!" said Bernel, and pulled lustily out to sea.
The swirl of the tide caught them as they cleared Brenière Point, and Gard crawled forward to take an oar. Nance did the same, and so set Bernel free to scull and steer, the arrangement which dire experience has taught the Sark men as best adapted to their rock-strewn waters and racing currents.
Gard's mind was in a tumult of revolt, but he sensibly drove his feelings through his muscles to the blade of his oar, and said nothing. Nance and Bernel were not likely to have gone to these lengths without what seemed to them sufficient reason.
And he remembered Nance's trembling arm on the Coupée, and her agonies of fear on his account, and so came by degrees to a certain acceptance of their view of matters, and therewith a feeling of gratitude for their labours and risks on his behalf. For he did not doubt that, should the self-appointed administrators of justice learn who had baulked them of their prey, they would wreak upon them some of the vengeance they had intended for himself.
He saw that it was no light matter these two had undertaken, and as he thought it over, and told the black welter under his oar what he thought of these wild and hot-headed Sark men, his gratitude grew.
The thin orange sickle of a moon rose at last, high by reason of the mists banked thick along the horizon, and afforded them a welcome glimmer of light—barely a glimmer indeed, rather a mere thinning of the clinging darkness, but enough for Bernel's tutored eye.
He took them in a cautious circuit outside the Quette d'Amont, the eastern sentinel of L'Etat, and so, with shipped oars, by means of his single scull astern, brought them deftly to the riven black ledges round the corner on the south side.
It is a precarious landing at best, and the after scramble up the crumbling slope calls for caution even in the light of day. In that misleading darkness, clinging with his hands and climbing on the sides of his feet, and starting at startled feathered things that squawked and fluttered from under his groping hands and feet, Gard found it no easy matter to follow Nance, though she carried a great bundle and waited for him every now and again. When he looked down next day upon the way they had come he marvelled that they had ever reached the top in safety.
"Wait here!" she said at last, when they had attained a somewhat level place, and before he had breath for a word she was away down again.
She was back presently with another bundle, and he started when she thrust into his hands a long gun, and bade him pick up the first bundle and follow her. The feel of the gun brought home to him, as nothing else could have done, her and Bernel's views of possible contingencies.
He followed her stumblingly along the rough crown of the ridge, till she dipped down a rather smoother slope and came to a stand before what seemed to him a heap of huge stones.
"There is shelter in here," she said. "And these things are for your comfort. We will bring you more to eat in a day or two—"
"Nance, dear," he said, dropping the gun and the bundle, and laying his hand on her slim shoulder. "I have become a sore burden to you—"
"Oh no, no!" she said hastily. "You would have done as much for me, and it is because—"
"For you, dear? I would give my life for you, Nance, and here it is you who are doing everything, and running all these risks for me."
"It is because I know they are in the wrong. It may be only a day or two, and they will thank me when they find out their mistake."
"Well, I thank you and Bernel with my whole heart. Please God I may some time be able to repay you!"
"If you are safe, that is all we want. Now I must go. We must get back before they miss us."
"God keep you, dear!" and he bent and kissed her, and as before she kissed him back with the frankness of a child.
He was about to follow her when she turned to go, but she said imperatively, "Stop here, or you may lose yourself in the dark. And in the day-time do not walk on the ridge or they may see you—"
"And the gun? What is that for?"
"If they should come here after you, you will keep them off with it," she said, with a spurt of the true Island spirit. "It is your life they seek, and they are in the wrong. But no one ever comes here, and you will not need it. Now, good-bye! And God have you in His keeping!"
"And you, dearest—and all yours!"—and she was gone like a flitting shadow.
And while he still stood peering into the darkness into which she had merged, she suddenly materialized again and was by his side.
"I forgot. Bernel told me to tell you it throws a little high. But I hope you won't need it. And there is fresh water among the rocks at the south end there."
He caught her to him again, and kissed her ardently, and then she was gone.
He strained his ears, fearful of hearing her slip or fall in the darkness, but she went without displacing a stone, and he was alone with the sickly moon, and the sombre sky, and the voices of the rising tide along the grim black ledges of his sanctuary.