Above me sat Garlicke, rifle in hand, breaking the clean outline of the ridge against the sky. The rifle was silhouetted thin and delicate as a needle against the brightness. A spurt of blue smoke burst from the muzzle, and the crack of it rang across the hollow. I heard a thud as the bullet struck the mass of hungry desire behind me, and glanced again quickly, hoping for effect. A red weal shone upon one of the horny eyelids. He stopped, blinking stupidly, and half-stunned by the shock. But the ball had not penetrated, and with a puzzled swinging of the wounded neck he resumed his scrambling, ungainly gait.
Still a hundred yards, and my eyes grew dizzy. A red mist seemed to close upon them, which, lifting now and again, showed me surrounding objects defined as on the slides of a magic lantern. My breath rasped with such a wheezing whistle that I looked wonderingly to see whence the sound could come. My arms were like wire ropes, strained to the breaking. My legs shuffled painfully under me. I felt the strength going out from me as water leaks from an unbunged cask. The sound of Garlicke’s shots struck fainter and fainter upon my ears. I stumbled again, and only saved myself from plunging forward by an instinctive straightening of my shoulders. The sunlight was shadowing to a night—a black darkness that could be felt.
Then, dimly, a familiar voice broke upon my ears; I was conscious of a hand seizing my arm; of some one struggling with me for Gwen. Yet, thought I, we will die together. Then the friendly hand, leaving this useless striving, dragged me forward; behind me some unseen power was thrusting me with mad shoves up the Titan steps of the cliff face. Suddenly came clearness of vision, and I knew Denvarre and Gerry, who were hauling and jerking me up the crevices of our rock of defence. Gwen was still in my arms, and below, the great monster scrabbled at the cliff-foot, reaching up his neck in raging, ravenous disappointment.
So, Denvarre dragging and Gerry butting like some benevolent goat, from niche to niche I stumbled with my burden, the little stones rattling down in their thousands upon the Beast below. Upon the top I staggered forward into the shelter of the tarpaulin, and laid Gwen down upon the rocky floor. Then, in the sudden impulse of her love, and in her revulsion from that great dread, she flung her arms about me as I stooped over her, and before them all kissed me on the lips. And who was I that I should not kiss back once and again?
So my love and I came to an understanding, and sealed our betrothal as the shadow of death passed from us—passing as a cloud when the breeze is strong and out leaps the sun; while above us the mountain still belched fire and molten stone, and below the Beast prowled, and sought hungrily for our blood. And I take it that never have man and maid plighted troth in stranger circumstance.
CHAPTER XIX
A WONDROUS BREACHING OF THE WALL
A good man all through is Denvarre, as I said before, and like a good man he took the failure of his hopes. And they had never been anything more. For as he explained to me, when we had changed our dripping clothes and joined the others on the cliff-top, he had no knowledge of Lady Delahay’s very distorted rendering of the situation. And he shook my hand and looked me straight in the eyes, and then, like the gentleman he was, went away to leave my sweetheart and me to say all we had to say to each other behind a ledge of rock that screened us from the others. And he took with him my unstinted admiration and esteem.
My future mother-in-law was in no condition for the exchanging of ideas or reproaches. The horrors of the situation crowded her understanding, leaving no room for such trivialities as the arrangement of her daughter’s welfare. Apathetically she took the plain statement I thought it only my duty to render to her, making no remark thereon save that “Nothing mattered when we should all be dead before the day was out.” And to this pessimistic view of the situation we had perforce to leave her, while we all waited for what should betide us at the hand of fate.
A RED STORM OF LAVA DASHED IN A CLOUD OF STEAM TO THE FAR END OF THE LAKE.
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