CHAPTER I. THE DEVIL'S WALK.
The ship Lovelace lay in the East India Docks, being newly arrived from an East India voyage. Her commander, Jackman, stood in her cabin and gazed in his glass; he looked at his face, and seemed to study it. There was a mark as of a blow close under the left eye, and he examined this mark with care.
He was a handsome man, with regular features and a dark brown skin. His eyes were black and flashing, and, contrary to the custom of that age, he wore his hair close cropped behind. Being satisfied, he picked up a bag, locked a drawer, quitted his cabin, withdrew the key, and left the ship.
He made his way on foot and by coach to Cannon Street, where the offices of the owners of the vessel were situated. Just when he was in the middle of the thoroughfare he was knocked down and his bag taken from him. He lay stunned for some moments, and, when he sprang to his feet, he caught sight of the darting figure of a man flinging the bag into some wide area and rushing on.
Captain Jackman gave chase, but did not somehow think of recovering his bag. Then, feeling confused and amazingly shocked by this theft of fifteen hundred pounds in gold and paper—mostly in gold—the money of the owners, he gave up, and walked sullenly, without even thinking of brushing his clothes, towards the offices.
Such was the story related to the owners by Captain Jackman of the ship Lovelace. He said he believed his assailant was a rascally little seaman whom he had shipped at Calcutta, and who had given him trouble all the way home.
Did Captain Jackman see the man?
Yes. Just outline enough of the flying figure to guess that it was he.
How was the money done up?
In three small bags.
Would he have had time to take these parcels out of the captain's bag in the narrow compass of time allotted him by the narrative?
Certainly. He had himself seen the sailor fling the bag down the area. Sailors are swift in breaking bulk. Some are born thieves. This sailor was peculiarly active, and was the one of the whole crew, knowing that Captain Jackman was going to carry a large sum of gold ashore, to rob him out of hand.
'How did he know that you were going to carry a large sum of gold ashore?'
'It may have leaked out through my servant, who, being a neat hand, packed the money for me.'
They went to the police. They searched the area, and found the bag, but they did not find the gold. What, then, was to be done? Raise a hue and cry?
Captain Jackman was grimly regarded by his owners, who had lost in Cannon Street a very handsome venture in their voyage.
'I hope,' said the captain, when he called at the office two days after the incident, 'that this will not make any difference in our relations, gentlemen.'
'You shall hear from us, sir,' answered one of the owners, a tall lean man with a dangling eyeglass, bending his form crane-like towards Jackman. The captain seemed to pause, to look confused and pained. He then, with a polite bow, raised his cap and left the place.
'I noticed a rather ugly mark near his eye,' said one of the partners. 'Ay,' said the other, 'and plenty of dust in his clothes.'
One day, some mornings after this, a fine young woman was pacing the sands of the sea-shore, lost in thought. The sands formed a noble stretch of promenade, brown and beautiful with ripples moulded by the waters of the sea. But from the wash of the surf the brine was sparkling and flashing: it was blowing half a gale. The tall, mid-Channel combers raced inshore, following one another like cliffs looking over cliffs. The girl's dress to windward blew to her figure, and showed her a beauty in shape: sometimes she paused, and turned to look at the sea, which swept into hilly heights of froth and obscured the horizon by miles of dazzle. Also, she took notice of a little barque staggering down Channel under close-reefed sail, sometimes vanishing, and then showing her whole shape. The sight was so toy-like, it made one linger. All the wet glories which came out of the sea with that little leaning, flying fabric glowed in each sparkling sunbeam that touched her. She was quaint, too, as an example of a vanished type of ship, though she belonged to her age. She was very high in the stern—a pink—and her bowsprit ran up like a mast. Her topsails, when set, would have a curiously lofty hoist for a vessel of her size. Such as she was, there she was, all of the olden time, spinning through the blue marrow of the Channel, and making for some far western port.
All on the left of the young lady rose a towering terrace of cliff, white and gray blocks, seared, ravaged, scowling, menacing the up-looker with the headlong threat of its topmost reefs. It went for miles. At some distance its curvature frames what is now a well-known watering-place.
The narrative must stop an instant to describe the young lady. Who is this girl that is walking solitary along the sands under a great height of cliff before the midday dinner-hour? She shall be introduced at once as Ada Conway, the daughter of Commander Conway, R.N., a gentleman of spirit, who had seen service, who lived in a comfortable little house out of eyeshot of the wash of ebb-tide. She was a tall girl, above the middle stature, of mould in absolute proportion. She had thick black hair. She was Eastern in her colour and eyes, yet had as fine a type of English face as you could wish to see. She was dressed somewhat quaintly in a sort of turban hat, with a short ornament of feather or bird's wing buckled to it by a fal-lal in gold. Her dress was of green material, and was cut so short-waisted as to reach nearly under her arms, where it was clasped in a girdle. This early century beauty blew along athwart the shrill gale and over the ribbed brown sand. And sometimes she looked at the leaning barque, and sometimes she stopped in earnest to take in the whole sumptuous mass of mountainous breaker, lifting into Atlantic height, before falling with the dead crash of the defeated billow.
Suddenly her ear was caught by a sound proceeding from the direction of the cliff. It did not come from the base; it did not come from the summit; but, womanlike, she must needs look along both. She was passing on, when the same strange, alarming cry stopped her, and now she had the good sense to scan the front of the cliff, where might-be she should see a man hanging by his eyelids to the edge of a rock, or some helpless boy in a hollow, lowered thence by a bowline, and lost to recovery by his friends.
The terrace of cliff was a vast expanse of holes and fissures—great crevices of the size of gaps; it buttressed out in parts with natural effect, was solid and green at its base, and was a noble example of an English seaboard. Miss Conway directed her eyes over the face of the cliff very carefully, studiously, as of purpose, under her shaded hand, missing the hole from which the voice was proceeding. She then, with a start, beheld a part of the figure of a man standing in a hollow of the cliff, well known to her, as a young lady residing in those parts, as the orifice of a smuggler's tunnel called the Devil's Walk.
She saw him wave a handkerchief. She pulled out hers and waved it in return, running a little way towards the base of the cliff, and shrieking—
'I know where you have got fixed. I will release you!'
The wind carried her high and powerful notes. The man in the hole flourished his arm with the most cordial, grateful gesticulation, and the young lady walked swiftly towards the little town which lay in an embrasure in the great cliff on her right.
The road was steep, wide, and formed an angle. It went like a steeple into the sky. People often paused to admire the gulls floating round about and in and out the liquid blue of this fanciful aerial spire. Nothing of the town was visible till almost the summit of the great gap had been reached, when there began to steal upon the sight a row of little houses built of flint, further off a church, then again a pleasant little rectory-house. Houses broke the landscape, which had few trees, and was hilly only in the distance. It was a sort of town that seemed to have settled down to nothing and to seem nothing. It gave itself no airs; all was chaste and sober—of a Quaker-like trimness of aspect. In a small garden, distant by about a mile from the bulk of the town, stood a cottage of two stories, square and strong for the gales. It was Commander Conway's home, and the home of his daughter Ada. The girl went swiftly along the edge of the cliff, this time towards the right. She had come about a mile along the sands; she had now to retrace her steps on top. It was not very strange that she should know exactly where the man was imprisoned. She had lived many years in those parts, and knew most of the traditions of the smugglers, and had grown acquainted with their haunts, and had visited them, through talking with old sailors to whom times were always hard. How distant the rolling blue sea seemed all that way off! A full-rigged ship was then in sight, looking close in; she rolled in the noblest majesty the deep can clothe her toys with.
But Ada had no eyes for pictures of the sea or sky, for processions of clouds, nor ear for the gull screeching in its soft white plenty midway high, nor for the breaker arching like glass to the sand. Not just then, anyhow. She struck a path, and walked with vigour about a mile, deviating into a part of the land, about a third of a mile from the brink of the cliff.
She arrived at a strange old enclosure. It might have been some ancient smuggler's vault, the memorial gone, nothing but the flat tombstone and the square of broken neglected railings left. She squeezed through these broken railings, and approached the small flat stone, which was fitted with a ring in the middle; but this she had known for years. Not a living creature was in sight, not even a goat. That vast down of cliff swelled its rampart without visible figure of man to the distant hills.
It seemed a desolate scene even now. One might figure it with some sense of horror in a gale of wind black with snow, so dark that if you did not mind, the next step might carry you into the scaling hiss that was washing, bubbling, fretting, trumpeting into breakers just below.
Miss Conway seized the ring and raised it, not without exerting considerable strength. She had often raised that stone cover, and now, when she had got it off, she knew what to do. It was, in short, the entrance to a smuggler's passage, designed for the lifting of goods from a height. It had been abandoned, not, however, before it had been formed, nor before a whole wheel of like corridors had radiated out of this mainspring under the earth. All were of no use, and had been deserted by the smugglers as worthless. Few took much trouble to wander in those cold caves. They felt tolerably certain that bold Bill and Harry Spikem had not left anything worth their acceptance in those gloomy depths. Boatmen offered to conduct visitors through them for sixpence; but a visitor was an extremely rare bird at a town where there were no lodgings to be had, and but two small inns of those old days for the traveller to put up at—inns such as Nelson sat in with Collingwood and his wife in a little room, whilst little Miss Collingwood watched the dog playing.
The stone being lifted, Miss Conway peered down and called. She peered down and shrieked. The echoes of her voice seemed to flash like light, so piercing were her tones. But under earth the voice is very deceptive, as you shall know if you hail a man from a depth of soil.
Why couldn't he have come to the place where he entered? she thought; and then she reflected that he might have strayed in one of the corridors, and have got to the end of it, and was there standing, thinking the entrance was over his head, and waiting with a beating heart for his release. For certain it was there was no release for the man save through the smuggler's exit.
If that was his luck in those branching corridors, he would have been well off had he fallen and been caught by some projection of rock; for then they could have seen him above; they could have lowered tackles and a bowline; they could more clearly have heard his shouts. Now he could not approach the seaward-facing hole so as even to show himself to those down-looking.
A flight of four rude steps sank into the gloom, and the cutting went away in blackness. She had a great deal of pluck in her veins; only a plucky woman, single-handed, would have ventured this rescue. It was no longer now like opening a trap-door and letting a man out; it was seeking for a captive in blinding blackness, save where the orifice in the cliff let in at its mouth of tunnel, at a distance, a green light like the object-glass of a telescope at evening.
It was clear that some officious hand must have closed this trap-door above on observing it opened, supposing it so by neglect; for the people of the place, though they got no money by the thing, rather valued themselves upon it as a small sight, though there were scores of greater wonders, east and west, particularly west, much of the same kind. Ada walked a little distance, until she was plunged in darkness; she then stood and shouted—
'Where are you?'
No answer was returned. Some faint sheen from the trap-door lay just here, and a little further onwards, and you could have distinguished the marks of the axe in the solid stuff the dare-devils had sheered through till they came to the open. The labour was wonderful because it had been secret, it had been done in passages of blackness in long nights, with look-outs to silence the axe and hands striking fiercely, by small lantern light, against the portion they had opened by a line ruled straight by magnetic compass.
But Miss Conway knew that the smugglers had run a number of tunnels, besides this long corridor, on either hand of it, extending like the antennæ of an aquatic insect. If the man had wandered into one of them, then, after she had cried aloud in vain to and from the central passage, she must return for help and lights, and make a proper search.
She walked on, again paused, shrieking in her singing, ringing voice—
'Who are you who have been caught down here?'
This, however, did not last long. She had neared the orifice overlooking the sea—close to, it glowed like a lamp in the cliff side—when her cry was echoed in a loud note, and a man's shape stood between her and the light.
'Oh, there you are!' shouted the girl, greatly relieved. 'I was afraid you had got lost in one of the off avenues.'
'You are extremely kind to come to my help,' he exclaimed, approaching her.
She could clearly see the movements of his shape against the disc that shone behind him.
'I don't know what I should have done. I don't know how long I've been locked up. I am very hungry, and could drink a gallon of beer. Was not I an idiot to come into this place?'
'I think you were,' she said. 'Did you pull the stone up?'
'Yes,' he answered, 'and some villain seeing me descend must have sneaked to the pit and put the stone on, for when I returned, making sure of my exit by that lighted hole yonder, lo! there was no light; all was blackness. I was without a stick, without means to knock upon it. Good heavens! what was I to do? There was only one way out, and that was over the cliff, about eighty feet of fall, as I took it.'
'What brought you here?'
'Curiosity, and,' said he, laughing, 'an inborn love of booty. I had read in my time a great deal of the old smugglers—of their shifts and ways—and knew that this and the adjacent coast contained many of their caves. I got a plan of this one from a man in your town, and entered it with a candle, and explored by candlelight; but the candle burnt out long ago. Idiot-like, I dreamt of run goods neglected, of hard specie in canvas, and tobacco in wood.'
'You never find such things,' said the girl, 'in our caves—the men were too cunning. They did not work for you or for me.'
'Pray what time is it?'
'About noon.'
'Lord! then I have been here since four o'clock yesterday afternoon!'
'It is time we got out,' she exclaimed. 'Did never a man pass below in so many hours?'
'Two shrimpers only did I see far out—aged, bowed shapes; and I could not have made myself heard.'
'Now hook your hand into this pleat,' said she, taking his hand and fixing his finger for him.
They walked in darkness. It never will be known how it happened—whether Miss Conway had, in that moment of excitement, failed to take a glance at the wall-star at the end, and turned with her companion into one of the long out-leading corridors, or whether she had absolutely forgotten her geography of the place in the blackness that was upon them, for she had never contemplated passing more than a few steps beyond the entrance to the cave. She grew sensible of her blunder when they arrived at the extremity of the cutting, which had, doubtless, other avenues forking out of it.
'I believe,' she cried, in a low voice, 'I have mistaken our cell.'
'In the name of mercy don't call it a cell!' he exclaimed, with the very presence of a shudder in his speech. 'In the long hours that I have been haunting these holes like a worm I have seen sights, and I have heard sounds, and amongst the sounds I heard was the faint, everlasting crying of the dead for those they loved, passing through the earth.'
'This is no place for such talk,' she exclaimed, baffled by the blindness of the cave.
They returned, still linked, but somewhat ironically. It seemed certain now that they took a turning to the left, for they missed the star, and came against the blank wall of the cliff, as they supposed. Strong of heart as was the girl, she was beginning to grow frightened; nor was there any consolation to be found in the idea of her having a companion and a protector. Who was he? Well, so far as his utterance could pronounce him, he was a gentleman, gatherable from his speech, of a somewhat heedless cast of mind; but how he looked, how he was dressed, how tall he was, whether he was black, brown, or white, she knew no more than whither the rest of these caves tended. She said—
'How long do you think I have been down here?'
'I should say half an hour,' he answered.
'You mean ten minutes,' she cried.
'Well, time lengthens itself whilst we stop in this place,' he exclaimed. 'If we have missed the avenue leading to the exit, we may go hunting endlessly through corridors for it.'
'No,' she exclaimed passionately. 'If I can see the daylight in the end, I shall know where I am.'
They walked, and they continued to walk. Ada's heart turned cold with horror. She had no true conception of the ramifications of these remarkable caves, and did not know but that there might be wells and desperate pits many feet deep sunk in some of the windings. They all, no doubt, had their hatchways or exits, long since buried under the sands of time. Evidently it was a great company of smugglers who had fashioned this Devil's Walk.
'Where are we going?' said the man, stopping; and Ada Conway stopped.
'I sha'n't know until I see the light in the passage where I met you.'
'The mischief is,' cried the man, 'that we may be walking yoked round and round endlessly, without ever coming to either light. Good God, what a horrible issue to this adventure! Nobody ever visits this place, I suppose?'
'Only you,' said she; 'and it's my business to save you.'
'How sorry I am that you should be here I can't say, yet it is natural to want to get out.'
'But it seems so mad to come into this smuggler's hole with a dream of booty, with no further provision than a candle; and it is wonderful that you should not know by that same light that you had been entombed, and spent a whole night underground!'
'Time flies and time loiters under wild conditions. I can tell you that, for I'm a sailor.'
'Are you?' she ejaculated. 'What rating?'
'I lately commanded a merchantman. I have lain awake all night sick in hospital, and have heard the quarters and halves strike with the rapidity of chimes. I could not have sworn that three hours have passed. I shall look the time, I suspect, when I get out. I am beginning to feel a bit weary of this blackness, and long for that one round of light that offered me a leap as an escape.'
As he spoke these words they made a step, and lo! on their left, at the extremity of the passage, glowed, within fifty feet, the cheery star of day.
'Hurrah!' shouted the man.
The girl, in a single sob, unheard by her companion, expressed her pent-up feelings.
'Yes, there's the port-hole right enough,' said the man. 'Now you know the way.'
'Come along straight,' she said.
She led him as before, and touching the wall, made a true course for the opening. But as she advanced she grew very uneasy on observing that no light fell through the hatch-hole, and that the short flight of steps was not visible in any definition of colour. Her companion, stumbling slowly alongside of her, presently noticed this.
'How did you get in?' said he.
'By a trap which I left open.'
'It isn't night again, I hope,' said he, with a ghastly laugh.
'I see no light,' she answered, 'and this is the corridor of the entrance. Oh, my God! I fear some meddlesome wretch, whilst I've been talking to you, instead of hastening above, has shut us down.'
'So that we can't get out?'
'Not from within.'
'Well,' said he, after a pause, and with a tone of courage in his voice, 'what we've got to do is to go to that light-hole yonder and wait for something to pass, and make our case known. Somebody is sure to pass.'
'Let me see if I can feel the steps with my foot,' said the girl. 'But hold on to me.'
He had brought out a large metal tinder-box—but empty; and in his fit of distraction let it fall. She shrieked as if she had been stung. The nerves of even stout-hearted girls soon yield to blackness, to the association of strange invisible men, and to the probability of a frightful fate. He laughed to encourage her, said what the thing was, and groped and picked it up. She took him to the steps, felt with her foot, and said, 'Feel for yourself. The trap-door is immediately overhead.'
'Well, if we mean to preserve our lives,' said the man—'and God knows how sorry I am that you should be here sharing my imbecile fate—we must walk to that round hole yonder, and keep a smart look-out on the sands below. But I'll try first if this stone can be lifted by shoving.'
He left her and got upon the short set of steps, and strained with his hands. He could not bring his shoulder to bear. In vain. He toiled and groaned. He came down, and feeling for her, said, 'No; the sight-seers have made it easy from above; but it is not easy to thrust up from under, and if I were twenty men I could not do it with my hands in that narrow circumference.'
'Let's walk to that hole,' said the girl, hooking him. 'It is our only chance.'
'Another sight-seer may descend,' said he.
'Few dream of booty in this age,' she answered. 'It is pretty well known,' she continued, 'that all are dry bones here.'
They gained the orifice. It framed a noble picture of Channel ocean afternoon. The seas ridged in glittering ranks, smoke burst from their curtseying heads, and they raced in groans upon the hidden beach beneath, whitening out back to half a mile of foam. Ships were in sight, blowing upwards, blowing downwards, rendered somewhat prismatic in the airy lens of that smuggler's window. The tide was making fast, and they could see nothing but white water.
'Look at that,' cried the man, pointing down.
The shuddering girl drew a foot or two closer, and peered below. 'There is no escape!' she exclaimed.
Now they looked at each other. The girl has been described. The man was the sailorly-looking fellow you would expect to see in him, after his confession of his calling. The light shone very well here, and sank for a distance of twenty or thirty feet into the gloom, then went out in utter suddenness into black blankness. Miss Conway saw standing beside her a man of about thirty years of age. He was dressed in the style of the day when Peace had newly lighted on the land, when the billows of our home waters were no longer vexed by the keels of contending cruisers, nor by their thunder. He was decidedly handsome. Hair cut short behind. He had lost his hat, and she could see that his hair in front was bushy and plentiful, coming over the forehead in the 'fine' style of that age. He had very striking features, but they looked ashen and sunken now. He bowed to the young lady when their gaze met, and said, raising his hand—
'You perceive I have lost my hat.'
'We will not seek it,' she exclaimed.
He was dressed in a dark green cloth coat, a coloured waistcoat and metal buttons. He was covered with dust, had scratched himself on the hands and face, and could not have looked in a more sorry plight had he been newly enlarged after a week's imprisonment in the great Pyramid.
'Do no persons but you ever walk along these sands when they are bare?' said the man.
'At long intervals,' said she, finding some faint reassurance in his presence and in the light. 'A boatman or a stranger in the place might stroll as far as this from the town. The tide is ugly, and it makes fast.'
'At that rate we are entombed, and must die in the full sight of life,' cried the man, leaning against the wall, and folding his arms with a scowl. 'It is bad enough that I should be here, cursed idiot that I am! But that I should have drawn you into a living grave!'
'I desire you will act as a man,' she interrupted passionately. 'We must husband our strength and preserve our voices. In to-day or in to-morrow'—but her tones failed her as she spoke—'a man may pass within reach of our voice, and learning who I am, deliver us.'
He gazed at her with a sudden admiration. She certainly made a noble heroic figure as she stood viewing him in that strange tunnel-like light, bright on the left, in gloom on the right. Her eyes sparkled. She looked down the corridor where the steps lay, then sat down, placing her back against the wall. It was clear that an under-dread possessed her, but not so as to master her. The thought of being locked down with a strange man in a lonely cavern for an afternoon and night—and for how much longer, who could tell?—was horrible; it kept her soul shuddering, so to speak. But the man's own consternation was too excessive to take notice of anything but this: that he was entombed in a smugglers' cave where, as things stood, there was every chance of their leaving their bones. He squatted in a most disconsolate posture opposite to her, and they both had the light on them.
'This,' said the man, meaning the light, 'is worth something, anyhow.'
'Continual darkness is frightful,' she answered; 'it drives men mad.'
'Who the deuce could figure that those sands would be covered at flood?' he cried. 'What an enormous waste they offer when the water is low!'
'You must have slept, otherwise you would surely know that you had already spent a night in this place.'
'When I found I couldn't get out,' he answered, 'I took to wandering in the darkness, and lost the light, and losing that, lost this corridor. I turned and plied and groped, and then my candle being burnt out, I sat down as I now sit, and I have no doubt I slept. I awoke, and began to grope my way along again, and after a long time my hands brought me to some entrance just down yonder, clear into the view of this orifice.'
'Was it daylight?' she asked.
'Bright.'
'When you get out,' said she, smiling faintly, 'you will have had enough of the Devil's Walk.'
'I shall thank God for my escape, madam,' cried he, with real fervour, 'if it is only for your preservation. May I venture to ask the name of the good and heroic lady who has come at the risk of her life to release a man from a living tomb?'
'My name is Ada Conway,' she answered.
He stood up and made her a low bow.
'My father is Commander Conway, late of the Royal Navy—what he will think—what he will fear—the fruitless searches he will be making—I am his only child—he will suppose I have been overtaken by the tide and drowned. Yet they should still be looking for me there,' she exclaimed, gazing out to sea.
'No, madam, they wouldn't creep in the surf,' said he; 'they'd watch for the breakers to strand you. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Captain Jackman, late of the ship Lovelace, which arrived home a week or two ago. I left her, and having heard much of these parts, thought I would make a cruise to your neighbourhood, and a pretty cruise it has been.'
'Are you an American?' she asked.
'No. I am supposed to descend from a good old English family.'
'You have had no food since yesterday?'
'Not a pinch of biscuit.'
'Well, God must help us out. He must help us out, for it is too, too awful,' she cried, burying her face.
'If people don't pass to-day, they will come along to-morrow,' said Captain Jackman; 'and I have got the voice of a lion.' Saying which, he stood up and sent 'Ship ahoy! For God's sake, help us,' slinging in ringing echoes across the troubled breast of the sea.
'Ay!' she exclaimed; 'but think what must pass between now and to-morrow.' She looked at her watch. 'Do you know the time?' she inquired.
'By the light in the west, I should say it is not far from six,' he answered.
'It is six,' she said, replacing her watch, 'and we have the night before us.'
'It must be borne,' said the man, with a note of sulky sympathy, clasping his knees, and fixing his eyes upon the sea.