The Man from the Clouds

by J. Storer Clouston

I fell to walking more and more slowly and at last I stopped and decided to accompany my thoughts with a little lunch. The boundary wall at this point ran close to the edge of the rocks and was rather higher than usual. I thought for a moment of sitting down and lunching under its lee, and then I noticed that it was very loosely built of large beach boulders and that the off shore breeze was whistling through it like a sieve; so I decided to descend to the sheltered beach and lunch there. That decision saved my life.

I clambered down, chose a rock to sit behind, and was just putting my hand in my pocket for my packet of sandwiches, when "Crack!"—something whistled close to my head and smacked against a ledge behind me. "Crack!" again, and the smack this time resounded from the rock beside me. At the third "Crack!" I was flat on my face behind that rock and my hand was in another pocket. It brought out something more to the point than sandwiches.

I had a pretty good idea by this time where the shots were coming from and I risked a quick rise of my head to make quite sure. I just had time to see a flash through one of the holes in the wall and down went my head again as a bullet smacked once more upon the ledge behind. Yet another shot followed and seemed to miss everything, for I heard no sound of lead on stone, and then up went my head and hand together and I was covering that bit of wall with my own revolver. I saw that my enemy was no very dead shot and I meant to risk his fire and snap at the flash through the wall. I knew I could get quite near enough his peep hole to startle him, and after I had sprinkled the near neighbourhood of that aperture for five or six seconds I thought it probably odds against his keeping his head sufficiently to do much aiming. To be quite candid I must confess that it was a soothing sensation to feel I was the better man with a gun, and that I should have been in a proper fright if it had been the other way about. One hears a good deal of discussion on the quality of courage nowadays, and there is my own small contribution.

The seconds passed, my finger on the trigger and my eyes glued to the largest crevice I could spy in that wall, but there was never another flash or crack. And then it suddenly struck me that the man might be moving down the wall to get a shot at me from another angle. As usual I acted on impulse, and this time I think correctly. Scarcely had the thought struck me than I was up and rushing forward to the shelter of the grass bank where the rocks began. There, quite safe but rather cramped, I crept along parallel to the wall for about a hundred yards. And then I jumped up, charged the wall, and brought half of it down as I hurled myself over. As my feet touched the ground I looked in both directions, very nearly simultaneously, and saw—nothing.

Whether in that first instant I was more disappointed or relieved, I should be afraid to say, but as soon as I had had a few seconds to think, my one feeling was disgust that the fellow had given me the slip. I took to my heels and ran along that wall first in one direction and then in the other, but there was not a sign of a living creature. And the sickening thing was that by this time he might have done one of several things—headed away from the shore at top speed as soon as he ceased firing, in which case he would be far enough by now, or lain down in one of the several fields of corn near by, or crossed the wall further along and hidden among the rocks; and it was quite impossible to guess which. I pondered over the problem for a few moments and then decided that as it was perfectly hopeless to search the corn or the beach I would risk it and hasten inland on the off chance of getting a clue, so I chose a grass field and set off across it at a trot.

The ground rose for about fifty yards and then fell sharply, and as I topped this rise I came right on to a familiar figure. It was my friend Jock and he seemed unusually excited; almost, in fact, intelligent.

"Stranger!" he gabbled, pointing in the direction I was going. "Jock seen stranger!"

I followed his dirty finger and a couple of hundred yards or so ahead I spied a figure strolling along a by road, rather ostentatiously strolling, it seemed to me.

"Thank you, Jock," said I, "you're a good man! Here's your half crown!"

I dropped to a walk now and by the time the stranger and I met I think I looked about as cool as he did. It was Mr. O'Brien, as I had guessed at the first glance.