'No fault is yours, Beloved, if we cannot do it: nor hardly mine either, I think. Were but one other with us we might be well-nigh confident. With Philip at the oars! None we wanted to share with us—and yet! Ah! no. Not he nor any would.'
He was deeply involved. At least a mile of grim discouragement stretched on every hand. Then he came upon the sunken hulk of an old wreck. Fiercer eddies and narrower channels constrained him to drop sail and take to the oars. A hard, dangerous, disheartening struggle set him nearer by a poor measure, but lost him in hope on the way.
'Fools and cowards all! Pleased would they be were I foiled, they knowing. How they would jeer; ay, with worse, too. It might go hard with me. But you, Beloved, never fear that I should fail you, if they tried—no, they would not,—not if they care for whole bones.
'To think that if we win, not for months may I praise you by the tale, not till we both have disproved and outlived the following of bad luck. Defend us from one spying us here.'
The boy glanced about with anxiety, giving special scrutiny to one high cliff opposite. There, scarcely distinguishable from the crags, stood up a grey tower, the bell-tower of an ancient devout institution, the House Monitory. His face grew rigid under a sudden apprehension. If he were sighted from above, what should stay those bells from knelling for him. He held his breath, and listened for them to break silence on the instant, realising one peril which he had not before considered. 'Hark!' would go the word, 'why does the House Monitory ring? in daylight, in fair weather? Who can be in peril off the Isle Sinister?' From cliffs to coves the word would drop, and start the swiftest sails out to investigate, for his exposure to ridicule or worse.
In a past century three bells had been towered there: consecrated and named after three Saints, to knell for souls that passed, unconfessed, unhouseled, in that place of wrecks; to be potent against the dominion of powers darker than death, too regnant there. The best, the only, succour was this that human fellowship could accomplish for doomed lives. Now, though cultured intelligence smiled at the larger superstition, the simple held it at its old worth; and still, to the comfort of their souls, a pious community kept the custom, serving the bells; and for their more tangible welfare tended a beacon light.
A little chill ran in the boy's veins as he anticipated the outbreak of those ominous bells; never yet had they rung for any, far involved as he, who had known escape. He betook himself more desperately to his endeavour. Necessity pressed him hard, for the tide ran, and suddenly declared that retreat to the open sea was cut off: where he had sailed free channels rocks grinned; reason withstood a fancy that they had lain in ambush, and risen actually to hem him in. Twice he risked with the narrowest of chances, and slid safe on the heave of a wave; on the third challenge a treacherous, swirling eddy caught the boat, swung it aslant, crashed it upon a lurking rock. A plank gave way splintered, and water spirted within.
The boy rowed desperate, straining by quick strokes and few, after deliverance from the narrows. Yet when he dared to lay aside the oars for an instant to check the leak, the boat was pitching with threats close in on every side. He could spare only a moment to catch up his coat, plug with it hastily, and drag atop the heavy cross-beams of his tackle; quick upon the oars again he needed to be, desperate of baling. Still the water oozed and trickled in, to lie up to his ankles and slowly to rise. There was no making out to sea; from the Isle Sinister he owned himself cut off by thick-set barriers; only the shore remained not absolutely unattainable though furthest it was.
Patiently and cautiously the boy felt his way. From stroke to stroke he held on safely, steady, quick-eyed, but told by the gradual water against his shins that his boat must shortly founder. Conscience smote him hard; the near sure prospect of swimming for bare life among the breakers opened his eyes. He had held as his very own to risk at will his boat and his life; now, with pangs of remorse, he recognised the superior claim of a grey-haired couple, who had been parents to him, who bereft of him would go down to the grave in grief and poverty. Of life, and the means of living, but little right had he to dispose, considering their due and their need.
The gunwale sank low, lower, till a lurch might displace the cross-beams, for they lost in weight as the water within the boat deepened. Yet point by point success attended, and released the foolhardy lad and his boat from dire extremity. They have chance of clean deliverance; they are past the last girdle of breakers, hardly a furlong from the shore; they are upon sleek water, with the tide against them but lazily.