A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

And yet to Rufus Sterne it never seemed more relentlessly cruel. Its stealthy creep and crawl seemed positively vindictive. Its voice was no longer the tinkle of silver bells, but the cynical laughter of fiends.

He made a desperate effort to pull himself still higher up the cliff, but that proved to be impossible. He could only lie still and wait. When the tide reached its flood it would be a dozen feet above where he lay. Would he sleep soundly or would dreams disturb his rest?

He had very little hope of being rescued alive. It was a long way round by Penwith Cove to St. Gaved, and even if the beautiful girl he had rescued—he did not know her name—ran all the distance, and men with the stretcher ran all the way back, it seemed scarcely possible that they could reach him in time.

He would like to live. The desire for life was never stronger than now. It was not so much that he was afraid of death—he was a little afraid of it, he was compelled to be honest with himself—but two things seemed to intensify his desire for life. The first was his great invention, which was now in process of being perfected; and the other was——

Well the other was an indefinable something which he was not able to shape into words. Something vaguely connected with the sweet-eyed girl whom he had that afternoon rescued from death. He did not understand what subtle influence had been set in motion; did not comprehend the nature of the spell, but the fact remained that the world seemed a brighter place since she came to the Hall, and life a richer inheritance.

It was not a matter that he could discuss even with himself. It was too shadowy and elusive. To attempt to reason the matter out would be to destroy a sweet illusion—for that it was illusion he had no doubt. And yet the illusion, or the impression, or the sensation, or whatever it might be, was so delightful that he had not the courage to touch it.

Life had not possessed so many pleasures for him that he could afford to scorch with the white flame of logic even the faintest and most shadowy of them. He had had a hard and unloved childhood, a youth from which all sympathy had been excluded, and a manhood of badly compensated toil and unrealised ambition. And now when life's stern and dusty way seemed opening out into the green pastures of success, and there had strayed across his path a sweet-eyed stranger whose very smile breathed hope and peace, it was not at all surprising that the desire for life burned with an intenser flame than ever.

He counted his heart beats, and watched the tide creeping higher and higher. The nearer it came the swifter appeared to be its approach. The gold on the sea was giving place to grey, the fire was dying out of the Western sky, a chill wind sprang up and whispered in the crevices of the cliffs. The gulls circled high above his head, and cried in melancholy tones. He shivered a little, perhaps with fear, perhaps because the evening was growing cold.

Did he regret saving the stranger's life and losing his own in doing it? On the whole, he did not think he did. It was surely a noble thing to save a human life.

"But why?" The old question pulled him up with a suddenness that almost startled him.