Dead Man's Rock

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

"His due, his due! Look at it! look again! I had a skull just now. John Railton's skull, no eyes in it though,

"For his glittering eyes are the salt sea's—

"For his glittering eyes are the salt sea's—

"Where is the skull? Let me fit it with a bonny pair of eyes here— here they are, or here, look, here's a pair that change colour when they move. Where is the skull? Give it me. Oh, I forgot, I lost it. Never mind, find it, find it. Here's plenty of eyes when you find it. Or give it this big, red one. Here's a flaming, fiery eye!"

As he stretched out his hand over the Great Ruby, I caught him by the wrist. But he was too quick for me, and with a sharp snarl and click of his teeth, had whipped his hand round to his back.

Then in a flash, as I grappled with him, he thrust me back with his left palm, and, with a sweep of his right, hurled the great jewel far out into the sea. I saw it rise and curve in one long, sparkling arch of flame, then fall with a dropping line of fire down into the billows. A splash—a jet of light, and it was gone:—gone perhaps to hide amid the rotting timbers of what was once the Belle Fortune, or among the bones of her drowned crew to watch with its blood-red tireless eye the extremity of its handiwork. There, for aught I know, it lies to-day, and there, for aught I care, beneath the waters it shall treasure its infernal loveliness for ever.

Into its red heart I have looked once, and this was what I read:—of treachery, lust and rapine; of battle and murder and sudden death; of midnight outcries, and poison in the guest-cup; of a curse that said, "Even as the Heart of the Ruby is Blood and its Eyes a Flaming Fire, so shall it be for them that would possess it: Fire shall be their portion, and Blood their inheritance for ever." Of that quest and that curse we were the two survivors. And what were we, that night, as we stood upon the sands with that last hellish glitter still dancing in our eyes? The one, a lonely and broken man; the other—

I turned to look at Colliver. He was huddled against the pit's side, with his dark eyes gazing wistfully up at me. In their shining depths there lurked no more sanity than in the heart of the Great Ruby. As I looked, I knew him to be a hopeless madman, and knew also that my revenge had slipped from me for ever.

We were still standing so when a soft wave came stealing up the beach and flung the lip of its foam over the pit's edge into the chest. I turned round. The tide was rising fast, and in a minute or so would be upon us. Catching Colliver by the shoulder, I pointed and tried to make him understand; but the maniac had again fallen to playing with the jewels. I shook him; he did not stir, only sat there jabbering and singing. And now wave after wave came splashing over us, soaking us through, and hissing in phosphorescent pools among the gems.

There was no time to be lost. I tore the madman back, stamped down the lid, locked it, and took out the key; then caught Colliver in my arms and heaved him bodily out of the trench. Jumping out beside him, I caught up the spade and shovelled back the wet sand as fast as I could, until the tide drove us back. Colliver stood quite tamely beside me all this while and watched the treasure disappearing from his view; only every now and then he would chatter a few wild words, and with that break off again in vacant wonder at my work.