XVI
"You'll not forget to come back for us about eight," Graeme shouted to the boatmen, as they pushed off from the fretted black rock on which their passengers had just made precarious landing.
"Nossir!" and they pulled away to their fishing.
"If it should be a fine sunset," he explained to the ladies, "the view of the Sark cliffs from Belême there, opposite the Gouliots, is one of the finest sights in the island."
The place they had landed was a rough ledge on the south side just under the Pente-à-Fouaille, some distance past the Pirates' Cave, and the ascent, though steep, was not so difficult as it looked. Graeme, however, in his capacity of chaperon, insisted on convoying them separately to the top—whereby he got holding Margaret's hand for the space of sixty pulse-beats—and then went down again for the cloaks and provisions.
Brecqhou, at the moment, was uninhabited. Its late occupant had thrown up his post suddenly, and gone to live on Sark with his wife, and a new caretaker had not yet been appointed. So they went straight to the house, deposited their belongings in the sitting-room, and then started out for a long ramble round the island.
First they struck west to Le Nesté, and scrambled among the rough rocks of the Point, stepping cautiously over the gulls' nests which lay thick all about, some with eggs and some with young.
The wonders of the sea-gardens in the rock-pools of Moie Batarde, and the entrancing views of Herm and Jethou and Guernsey, gleaming across the sapphire sea, with a magnificent range of snowy cloud-mountain breasting slowly up the deep blue of the sky behind, and looking solid enough to sit on, as Miss Penny said, absorbed them till midday.
Then they returned to the house, lit a fire of dried gorse, filled their kettle at the well and set it to boil, and carried out a table and chairs, for eating indoors was out of the question with such beneficence of sunshine inviting them to the open.
All the afternoon was occupied with the wonders of the Creux-à-Vaches, with its bold scarps and rounded slopes draped with ferns and enamelled with flowers, and the crannies and indentations of the northern side of the island. They sat for a time on Belême cliff entranced with the wonderful view of the bold western headlands of Sark, unrolled before them like a gigantic panorama from Bec-du-Nez to the Moie de Bretagne,—a sight the like of which one might travel many thousand miles and still not equal. And they promised themselves a still finer view when the setting sun washed every cliff and crag and cranny with living gold.
But as they turned to tramp through the ragwort and bracken towards the house, intent on cups of tea, the sight of the western sky gave them sudden start. The solid range of snow-white cloud-mountains had climbed the heavens half-way to the zenith, and was stretching thin white streamers still further afield. And its base in the west had grown dark and threatening, with pallid wisps of cloud scudding up it like flying scouts bearing ill tidings.
"Wind, I'm afraid," said Graeme, "and maybe thunder—"
And as he spoke a zigzag flash ripped open the dark screen, and a crackling peal came rattling over the lead-coloured sea and bellowed past them in long-drawn reverberations.
"Johnnie was right after all, the little monkey."
"I'm sorry now I didn't give him that sixpence," said Miss Penny.
"I don't suppose it would have made much difference—except to Johnnie. However, I hope it will soon blow over. Good thing we've got a shelter, and we can enjoy our tea while the elements settle matters among themselves outside."
The storm broke over them before the kettle boiled. The rain thrashed the house fiercely under the impulse of a wild south-west wind, which grew wilder every minute, and the thunder bellowed about them as though the very heavens were cracking.
"This is a trifle rough on inoffensive pilgrims," said Graeme. "I'm really sorry to have got you into it."
"You didn't do it on purpose, did you, Mr. Graeme?" asked Miss Penny, with pointed emphasis.
"I did not. I devoutly wish you were both safe home in the Rue Lucas."
"All in good time. Meanwhile, we might be worse off, and this tea is going to be excellent. Margaret, my child, do you know that tea under these conditions is infinitely preferable to tea in Melgrave Square, under any conditions whatsoever?"
"It is certainly a change," said Margaret.
"And a very decided improvement. It's what some of my young friends would call 'just awfully jolly decent,'" said Miss Penny.
"We're not out of the wood—that is to say, the island—yet," suggested Graeme.
"Or we shouldn't be here enjoying ourselves like this. Brecqhou is sheer delight."
"On a fine day," said Margaret quietly.
"Or in a thunderstorm," asserted Miss Penny militantly. But Margaret would not fight lest it should seem like casting reflections on their present estate.
The thunder rolled over the wide waters with a majesty of utterance novel to their unaccustomed city ears, the rain drew a storm-gray veil over everything past the well, the wind waxed into hysterical fury, tore at the roof and gables, and went shrieking on over Sark. And above the rush of wind and rain, in the short pauses between the thunder-peals, the hoarse roar of the waves along the black bastions of Brecqhou grew louder and louder in their ears.
Graeme's face grew somewhat anxious, as he stood at the window and peered westward as far as he could see, and found nothing but fury and blackness there. He had a dim recollection of hearing of outer islands such as this being cut off from the mainland for days at a time. He could imagine what the sea must be like among the tumbled rocks below. And he had seen the Race of the Gouliot in storm time once before, and doubted much if any boat would face the whirl and rush of its piled-up waters.
What on earth were they to do if the men could not get across for them?
Suppose they had to pass the night there?
Good Heavens! Suppose they could not get across for days? What were they to live on?—to come at once to the lowest but most pressing necessity of the situation?
They had weather-proof shelter. Firing they could procure from the interior woodwork of the house and outbuildings. And they had a small amount of tea and sugar, and half a tin of condensed milk, and rather more than half of the day's provisions, since they had contemplated high tea before embarking again. He determined that, if the storm showed no signs of abating, the high tea must be a low one, since its constituents might possibly have to serve for to-morrow's breakfast as well.
Both girls, their own perceptions strung tight by the electric state of matters outside, noticed the touch of anxiety in his face as he turned from the window, but both declined to show it.
"How's her head, Captain?" asked Miss Penny jovially.
"Dead on to a lee shore," he answered in her own humour. "But the anchorage is good and we're not likely to drift."
"Come! That's something to be thankful for, under the circumstances. Brecqhou banging broadside on to that big black Gouliot rock would be a most unpleasant experience. How about the sunset cliffs of Sark?"
"They're very much under a cloud. I'm afraid we must pass them for this time and choose a better. The cliffs indeed are there, but the sun is much a-wanting."
"Hamlet without the ghost of a father or even a sun."
"Truly!" And looking at Margaret, he said earnestly, "I can't tell you how sorry I am it has turned out this way."
"But it is no fault of yours, Mr. Graeme. No one could possibly have foreseen such a breakdown in the weather, with such a glorious morning as we had."
"After all, I'm not at all sure it isn't all Mr. Graeme's fault," said Miss Penny musingly.
"As how?" he asked.
"Didn't you stop me giving Johnnie Vautrin six demanded pennies to keep it fine all day?"
"I discouraged the imposition, certainly. But I don't suppose Johnnie could have done much—except with your sixpence."
"He's a queer clever boy, is Johnnie. He certainly said it wasn't going to keep fine."
"Little humbug!"
"Yet you gave him fivepence for seeing—or saying he saw—two crows and three crows, because two crows mean good luck and three crows mean——"
"You talk as if you believed his nonsense, Hennie," broke in Margaret.
"Perhaps I do—to some extent. He certainly declined to pledge himself to a fine day, and it remains to be seen if the rest of his—"
"—Humbug," suggested Graeme.
"We'll say predictions, since we're in a superstitious land,—come true. I shouldn't be a bit surprised. Thunderstorms are not, as a rule, deadly, and it is conceivable that they may, at times, even be means of grace. Would you mind piling some more gorse on that fire, Mr. Graeme? A counter-illumination is cheerful when the heavens without are all black and blazing. What a joke it would be if we had to stop here all night!"—she said it with intention, and Graeme understood and blessed her.
"We'll hope it won't come to that," he said, as lightly as he could make it. "But, if it should, we could make ourselves fairly comfortable. Robinson Crusoes up to date!"
"No—Swiss Family Robinsons!" was Margaret's quota to the lightening of gloom. "The way everything turned up just when that interesting family required it struck me as marvellous even when I was a child."
"You always were of an acutely enquiring—not to say doubting—disposition, my dear, ever since I knew you," said Miss Penny.
"I always liked to get at the true truth of things, and humbug always annoyed me."
"No wonder you found Mr. Pixley a trial, dear," said Miss Penny.
"You don't mean to cast stones of doubt at that shining pillar of the law and society, Miss Penny?" said Graeme, tempted to enlarge on so congenial a subject.
"Mr. Pixley does not appeal to me—nor I to him. I like him just as much as he likes me. And that's just that much,"—with a snap of the fingers.
"I'm afraid you and I are in the same boat," said Graeme enjoyably.
"I shouldn't be a bit surprised,—and for the same reason. We both like—"
"What shall we do for provisions, Mr. Graeme, if the storm continues?" asked Margaret, and Miss Penny smiled knowingly.
"I suggest husbanding those we have. It can't surely last long."
"Mrs. Carré was telling us the other night that once no steamer could get to Sark from Guernsey for three weeks," chirped Miss Penny. "If a steamer couldn't get to Sark, how should a small boat get to Brecqhou—Q.E.D.?"
"Gracious!" cried Margaret in dismay.
"Mr. Graeme would have to catch rabbits for us—and fish. And I believe there are potatoes growing outside there. Our clothing will be in rags, Meg. Mr. Graeme will be a wild man of the woods, and all our portraits will appear in the illustrated papers. The Outcasts of Brecqhou. Marooned on an Uninhabited Island. Three Weeks Alone."
"I'm off for a look round," said Graeme. "If that boat should be waiting for us, somewhere down below, it would be too stupid for us to be waiting for it up here," and he turned up his coat collar and pulled his cap over his brows.
"You'll get soaked," said Margaret. "Please take this, it will help a little," and she jumped up and thrust her golfing cloak into his hands. He seemed about to refuse, then thanked her hastily, and threw it over his shoulders and went out.
The wind caught him and whirled him along towards Belême cliffs. He tacked to the south and made a slant for the place where they had landed. As soon as he was out of sight of the house he drew the hood of the cloak over his head and rejoiced in it.
To be wearing her cloak brought Margaret appreciably nearer. Possibly that hood had even been over her head, had touched her shining hair, her fair soft cheek. He pressed it to his face, to his lips, and the hot blood danced in his veins at his temerity. The gale bellowed outside and drove him staggering, but inside the hood was the uplifting warmth and glow of personal contact with the beloved. Her very mantle was sacred to him. He fancied he could detect in it a subtle intimation of herself. He hugged it close, and leaned back upon the gale, and drifted towards the southern cliffs.
One glance at the black rocks below,—now hidden by the rushing fury of the surges, now outstanding gaunt and grim, with creamy cascades pouring back into the roaring welter below,—showed him how impossible it would have been for any boat to approach there.
He plunged on through the masses of dripping ragwort towards the eastern cliff, and stood absorbed by the grim fury of the Gouliot Race. The driven waves split on the western point of Brecqhou and came rocketing along the ragged black rocks on either side in wild bursts of foam. The Gouliot Passage was roaring with the noise of many waters, and boiling and seething like a gigantic pot. The sea was white with beaten spume for half a mile each way, and up through the tumbling marbled surface great black coils of water came writhing and bubbling from their tribulation on the hidden rocks below. The black fangs of the Gouliots were grimmer than ever. The long line of scoured granite cliffs on either side looked like great bald-headed eagles peering out hungrily for their prey.
There were no boats at the anchorage in Havre Gosselin. He learned afterwards that they had all run to the shelter of Creux Harbour on the other side of the island. He breasted the gale and headed for the house.
"I'm very much afraid we're stuck for the night," he said, as they looked up enquiringly on his entrance. "There's not a sign of a boat, and I'm quite sure no boat could face that sea. Sark looks like an outcast island—the very end of the world."
"Then we'll make ourselves comfortable here," said Miss Penny. "We began to fear you'd been blown over the cliffs. Is there plenty of wood in the house?"
"I'll go and get some more," and he came back with a great armful of broken driftwood, and went again for as much gorse as he could carry in a rude wooden fork he found near the stack.
"You must be soaked through and through," said Margaret.
"Bit damp, but your cloak was a great help," and he piled gorse and chunks of wood on the fire till its roaring almost drowned the noise of the storm outside.