The wind was whooping louder, whirling in waves of swiftness and sound now close to the ground, now high up aloft—a regular typhoon of a storm—and it was dark as pitch, too, for even the ghastly storm-light had disappeared, swallowed by the tempest. Twice Marguerite attempted to peer around the angle of the buttress, her hand shielding her eyes, and twice she was flung back; but something impelled her forward again, some premonition she could not understand; and all at once in the chaos beyond, as, clutching the rough granite, she was bending half across its sharp edge, she saw a tear in the blackness, a stripe of pulsating red—to the east of north—a flash of blinding green, and then a tossing ball of whiteness that might be a masthead light.
A wreck? Yes, a wreck, and what could live in such a sea? If there was a sinking boat out there in the darkness, with men clinging desperately to the rigging, they had best not pray for human help—that she knew—and she sent a glance heavenward where no heaven was to be seen. A dreadful fear for her paladin of a father, for Jean de Salvières, for the sailor-abbé whom she revered and loved with all her heart, shot through her to add to her wretchedness. She was aware that, peril or no peril, they would not hesitate a second to do much more than their duty: and at last, detaching herself from the protection of the huge wall, she battled on, half creeping, leaning against the gusts, fighting every inch of the way to the cliff edge. Down the sheer face of the rock to the narrow beach of pebbles below, where in half an hour the breakers would be thundering, ran an iron cable—a short cut on ordinary occasions for sailors and coastguards; but just now a mere vibrating thread stretched downward to the Pit. She had stumbled many times and fallen twice, for the path was slippery as ice, and as her hand came in contact with the stanchion she paused to listen; Garrassime at her shoulder, braced and rigid like a tree, holding her with both arms for fear she would be carried over the ghastly brink.
Another rocket, then another, and another. A little sob choked Marguerite, straining her eyes in the slowly, slowly dragging dawn that now was beginning to make the gloom more visible. She was at home in storms—a child of the tempest, Régis often said—and for herself she was not caring; but when gradually she began to discern away down there on the foam-flecked shingle two darker masses, evidently the life-boats and a throng of men fighting forward to the launching, all possible difficulty was wiped out of her mind, and, tearing herself free from Garrassime, she started forward.
“Mother of God!” roared the Russian, his gray hair fairly bristling on his head. “You are not going to try that!” But Marguerite, holding to the cable-head, was peering downward for the first of the unequal footholds cut in the rock, and his voice was lost in those of wind and sea. Under her long coat she wore a woolen gown made in a single piece, a handy garment she had hastily put on when she had been roused by the storm, so, merely kicking off her little sodden slippers, and before he could more effectually interpose himself, she was over and already descending, her face to the cliff, her back to the unseen void. Garrassime was a strong man, but no sailor; besides, he was so tall and heavy that to follow her would mean sure destruction for both of them; but he suddenly remembered a fissure that slanted down the cliff-side some two hundred yards further on, and, praying with all his might that she might be spared, he ran for it—bent nearly double beneath the terrible weight of the wind, his heart beating with anguish against his ribs—anguish for her whom he had learned to worship, the dear, sweet, daring, foolhardy little lady of Plenhöel.
Through wildly tossing clouds the eastern sky was now showing faintly gray, and the “Gamin” began to see the notches that she touched one after another with her silk-shod feet. She must be half-way now, and, sparing her breath, clinging hard, flattening her little body to the dripping crag, she doggedly continued to crawl down, hearing dully the clang of the tocsin far, far above her head.
“Ah,” she suddenly cried, aloud, “I am in the water! The tide must be coming fast!”
She let go the cable from her torn and bleeding palms, turned around, leaning against the base of the rock, and searched the maddened sea—white as a tourmente of snow. No! there was no sign of a ship on the tossing froth, save two black spots appearing and disappearing convulsively in the spouting water—the life-boats she knew—but whether they were coming shoreward or going out toward some invisible point she could not tell. Determined to see better, she climbed half a dozen of the wet steps again and gazed fixedly seaward. At last something flecked with white and red, she thought, caught her eye; it was rolling in and out among the breakers, and behind it there were other objects lugubriously bobbing up and down. She jumped, and ran plungingly toward the thing nearest to the beach, finally wading thigh-deep in the broken back-wash of the flooding tide; snatched desperately at the queer bundle, and dragged it ashore, pulling it up after her with all her strength. Gasping for breath, she stopped at the shingle-top, and before investigating what she held she set her teeth. A white serge skirt, two narrow stockinged feet, a torrent of drenched hair! She turned it over, trembling violently, and, falling on her knees, saw the beautiful features—unspoiled, unscarred even, and strangely sculptural—of Laurence Palitzin. On her breast, embroidered across the white jersey, the words Wild Rose—the name of her yacht—made Marguerite cry out with a new horror. For a moment she crouched there, seeking mechanically for the heart, the wrist, of this first victim recovered; but she could find no sign of life; and, tears running down her face mingling with the rain and brine, she asked herself how she could at least save the body before the galloping flood claimed it again. Of herself she had no time to think, and at that minute, clambering out of the fissure, Garrassime stumbled toward her with reckless haste. Before she had either heard or seen him he was at her side, had caught up the body of his lost mistress—which a life-belt still encircled in futile mockery—and, drawing Marguerite by the hand, was hastening to the higher beach near the life-station’s weed-grown stairs.
Just then, riding a tremendous wave, the first life-boat—the one that bore Tatiana’s name—toppled half-over as it took the shore, and Marguerite vaguely saw her father and her uncle Jean leap into the whirling water, and receive from the abbé’s arms another limp and apparently lifeless body that somehow seemed all dislocated; but by this time the girl was past all emotion and listlessly looked on as they plunged forward with their burden.
It was as full daylight by now as it would be that morning, and the dimness that fell from the sky and rose from the sea showed with astonishing precision the helpless form in soaked white flannels, the head thrown back and rolling horribly from side to side. Who it was she did not care. She watched the grim procession of sauveteurs carrying more bodies, saw the other life-boat rush up almost atop of its companion, and the abbé turn again to the swirling tide to see if yet more derelicts were floating up with it. Then she found herself, somehow or other, in the round room of the “Station,” staring at something upon an already dripping truckle-bed, and Régis and Jean bending over a placid white face with closed, dark-fringed lids, and a relaxed mouth into which some one was attempting to pour brandy.
It was all so much like a nightmare that once or twice Marguerite shook herself as if to waken her palsied faculties. Surely she had seen that face before. Where? When? Ah! at Lady Seton’s in the Meurice apartment a night some few centuries ago....