Joan, the Curate

by Florence Warden

But when he got down to the beach he was more fortunate. He found footmarks and little red spots on the broken sandstone rocks, and, following these indications, he came round a jutting point of frowning cliff, to a cave, partly hollowed out by the action of the sea, and partly by human hands, the walls of which were green with the slime left by the tides.

Half in and half out of the cave, lying on the shingle and broken rocks, lay the body of the lad of whom he was in search.

It was with something like tenderness that Tregenna stooped, and, full of dread that his own blow had killed him, raised the lad from the ground, turning him, and looking into his white and livid face, with the half-dried blood making disfiguring patches on one side of it.

For the first moment he thought the boy was dead; but on further examination he found that the heart was still beating, and at the same moment the lad, who had been in danger of suffocation from the fact that he had fallen face downwards, showed by a movement of the eyelids, and by a quivering of the muscles of the mouth, that he was alive, and recovering.

Tregenna cleansed his face as well as he could from the blood and sand with which it was disfigured. There was no need to loosen his clothes, for his shirt was open at the neck, confined only by a flowing neckerchief, which now hung wet and bedraggled on his breast.

“What cheer, mate!” cried Tregenna, as he supported the lad by the shoulders against his knee, and felt in his own pocket for the flask he usually carried there, and which was as much a necessity of his adventurous life as the pistol at his belt or the sword at his side.

The lad opened his eyes, stared at him for a moment dully, then with a gleam of returning consciousness. It was at that moment that Tregenna put the flask of aqua vitæ to his lips.

“Drink, lad, drink. ’Twill bring thy senses together. And fear not. We’ll not let a brave boy hang, smuggler though he may be! Drink, and fear not. But take this warning, not to meddle with the affairs of lawless folk again.”

Still the boy maintained the dead silence which had been such a strangely marked characteristic of him during the fight. He gulped down the spirit put to his lips, and then sat, with his head bent upon his hand, as if still half stupid, either from the blow which had wounded him or from consequent loss of blood.

Tregenna thought there was something of despair in his attitude, and in the wild gaze with which he looked about him, staring first at the gray sea, the edge of which was like a roll of white vapor, and then at the frowning cliff above him. He seemed to be listening for some voice, some footstep.