The House Under the Sea: A Romance

by Max Pemberton

I waited for him to come up to me, and so placed myself that his eyes, I hoped, might turn seaward and not up towards the woods where such weird sights were to be seen. For this place, the angle of the great pasture-land where it met the forest, was occupied by sleeping cattle, white, and still, and frigid, so that all the scene, glimmering in the moonlight, might have been cut out of some great block of marble; and cows and sheep, and trees and hills, all chiselled by the hand of Death. That a living thing should be speaking and moving there seemed almost an outrage upon the marvellous beauty of that field of sleep. The imagination reeled before this all-conquering trance, this glory of nature spellbound. It were as though a man must throw himself to the earth, do what he would, and surrender to the spell of it. And that, perchance, we had done, and the end had been there and then, but for a woman's cry, rising so dolefully in the woods that every impulse was awakened by it and all our resolutions retaken.

"Did you hear that?" I cried to him, wildly; "a woman's voice, and near by, too! You'll not turn back now, Captain Nepeen!"

"Not for a fortune!" said he, bravely; "it would be Gertrude Dolling, the purser's sister; we cannot leave her!"

The desire was like a draught of wine to him. He had been near falling, I make sure, but now, steadying himself for an instant upon my arm, he set off running at all his speed, and I at his heels, we crossed the intervening grass and were in the wood. There we found the purser's sister, stumbling blindly to and fro, like a woman robbed of sight, while children were clinging to her dress and crying pitifully because she did not heed them.

It was an odd scene, and many must come and go before I forget it. Dark as the wood might be by day, the moonlight seemed to fill every glade of it, showing us the gnarled trunks and the flowering bushes, the silent pools and the grassy dells. And in the midst of this sylvan rest, remote from men, a lonely thicket of the great Pacific Ocean, was this figure of civilization, a young girl decked out in white, with a pretty hat that Paris might have sent her, and little children, in their sailors' clothes, clinging trustingly, as children will in confidence to a woman's protecting hand. No surprise was it to me then, nor is it a surprise now, that the girl neither saw nor heard us. The trance had gripped her surely; the first delirium of exaltation had robbed her of sight and sense and even knowledge of the children. That doleful wailing song of hers was the first chant of madness. Her steps were undirected, now carrying her to the wood's heart, now away from it a little way towards the sea's beach. My order, twice given, that she should stand and wait for us was never answered; I do not even think that she felt my hand upon her shoulder. But she fell at last, limp and shuddering, into my arms, and I picked her up and turned towards the sea.

"The children to you, and straight ahead," said I to the captain; "run for your life, and for the lives of these little ones. It will be something to save them, captain."

He answered me with a word that was almost a groan; but stooped to his task, nevertheless. He knew that it was a race for their lives and ours.

I had the burden in my arms, I say, and no feather's weight was less to me in the hope of my salvation and of those we strove for. The way lay straight down, through a ravine of the low cliffs to the beach we had left and the good boat awaiting us there. Nothing, it seemed, but a craven will could stand henceforth between us and God's fresh air that night. And yet how wrong that reckoning was! There were a dozen of Czerny's men halloaing wildly on the cliff-side when we came out of the wood; and almost before we had marked them, they were after us headlong like devils mad in wine.

Now these men, as we learned afterwards, driven by hunger and thirst to the point of raving, had come ashore that very evening; it may be to rifle the stores on the island; it may be in that spirit of sheer madness which sometimes drives a seaman on. Twenty in all when they landed, there were eight asleep already when we encountered them; and lying on the cliff's side, some with arms and heads overhanging, some shuddering in the fearful sleep, one at least bolt upright against the rock with his arms outstretched as though he were crucified, they dotted that dell like figures upon a battle-field. The rest of them, a sturdy twelve, fired by the dancing madness, brandishing their knives, uttering the most awful imprecations, ran on the cliff's head above us, and seemed to be making straight for the cove where our boat lay. And that is why we said that the race was for life or death.

There are moments in his life when a man must decide "aye" or "nay" without checking his step to do so. As things stood, the outlook could not have been blacker while we ran through the ravine to the water's edge. Behind, in the wood, lay the dancing death; before us these madmen with their gleaming knives, their unearthly yells, their reeling gait and fearful gesticulations. We had to choose between them, the sleep in the lonely glen, or the race downward to the shore; and we chose the latter, believing, I think, that the end must be the same, turn where we would.