The Watchers: A Novel

by A. E. W. Mason

So much Parmiter had told me when he suddenly stopped and listened. I could hear nothing, however much I strained my ears, and in a moment or two Dick began to move on. The mist was very thick about us--I could not see a yard beyond my nose; but we were now going down hill, so that I knew we had crossed the ridge of the island and were descending towards the harbour of New Grimsby and the house under Merchant's Rock.

We had descended for perhaps a couple of hundred yards; then Dick stopped again. He laid a hand upon my arm and dragged me down among the gorse, which was drenched with the fog.

"What is it?" said I.

"Hush," he whispered; and even as he whispered I saw a sort of brown radiance through the fog a long way to my left. The next instant a speck of clear light shone out in the heart of this radiance: it was the flame of a lantern, and it seemed miles away. I raised myself upon my elbows to watch it. Dick pulled my elbow from beneath me, and pressed me down flat in the grass; and it was fortunate that he did, for immediately the lantern loomed out of the fog not a dozen yards away. I heard it rattle as it swung, and the man who carried it tramped by so near to me that if I had stretched out my hand I could have caught him by the ankle and jerked him off his feet. It was the purest good fortune that he did not detect us, and we lay very still until the rustle of the footsteps had altogether died away.

"Is that one of them?" I asked.

"Yes; William Blads. He lodges with Mrs. Crudge next to our cottage."

We continued to descend through the gorse for another quarter of an hour or so until an extraordinary sound at our feet brought us both to an halt. It was the strangest melancholy screeching sound that ever I had heard: it was so harsh it pierced the ears; it was so wild and eerie that I could hardly believe a voice uttered it. It was like a shrill cry of pain uttered by some live thing that was hardly human. It startled me beyond words, and the more so because it rose out of the fog directly at our feet. Dick Parmiter trembled at my side.

"Quick," he whispered in a shaking voice; "let us go! Oh, let us go!"

But he could not move for all his moaning. His limbs shook as though he had the fever; terror chained him there to the ground. Had I not known the boy under other circumstances, I should have set him down for a coward.

I took a step forward. Dick caught hold of my arm and muttered something, but his voice so wavered and gasped I could not distinguish what he said. I shook his arm off, and again stepped forward for one, two, three paces. As I took the third pace the ground suddenly sloped, my feet slipped on the wet grass; I let go of my valise, and I fell to my full length upon my back, and slid. And the moment I began to slide my feet touched nothing. I caught at the grass, and the roots of it came away in my hands. I turned over on my face. Half my body was now hanging over the edge. I hung for a second by my waist, and as I felt my waist slipping, I struck out wildly upon each side with my arms. My right arm struck against a bush of gorse; I seized hold of it, and it bent, but it did not break. I lifted a knee carefully, set it on the edge, and so crawled up the slope again.