“Here we must turn,” he said suddenly, “and the last half-mile to the sea-wall we shall have to wade.”
They paused and looked up to the sky. In half an hour the day would come, but in seventy minutes the breakers must beat against the sheer cliff.
“None has reached the shore alive and with his senses,” said Belfort, looking out to sea. “He would have seen our lights and come to us, or called if he had broken limbs. It is useless to search the shore too closely. We shall find them here at the edge, half in, half out, especially those with life belts, such as we find any winter morning after bad weather.”
He spoke grimly, as one who knew that it is not the deep sea that must be paid its toll, but the shoal water where the rocks and quicksands and crabs and gulls are waiting. They made their way back in silence, and slowly a new grey day crept into life. At last they could see the horizon and read the face of the water still torn into a seething chaos of foam. There was no ship upon them. If there had been a wreck the storm had done its work thoroughly. Belfort climbed to the summit of a rock, and looked back towards Fecamp. Then he turned and searched the shore towards Yport.
“There is one,” he cried, “half in, half out, as I said. We shall cheat the crabs at all events, my father.”
And clambering down, he stumbled on with a reckless haste that contrasted strangely with his speech. For, whatever our words may be, a human life must ever command respect. Any may (as some have done) die laughing, but his last sight must necessarily be of grave faces.
“This one is not dead,” said the priest, when they had turned the man over and dragged him to dry land. Belfort cut away the life-belt, examining it as he did so.
“No name,” he said. “They will have to wait over there in London, till he can tell them what ship it was. See, he has been struck on the head. But he is alive—a marvel.”
He looked up, meeting the priest's eyes, and, remembering his words spoken under the lee of the wall of the Hotel de la Plage, he laughed as a fencer may laugh who has been touched beyond doubt by a skilful adversary.
“He is a small-made man and light enough to carry—some town mouse this, my father—who has never had a wet jacket before—see his face how white it is, and his little arms and hands. We can carry him, turn and turn about, and shall reach the sea-wall before the tide is up, provided we find no more.”