Part 26 (1/2)

Another low pipe out of the darkness, and they had found the boat and tumbled into it, wet and bruised, and breathless.

”Dieu merci!” said Bernel, and pulled l.u.s.tily out to sea.

The swirl of the tide caught them as they cleared Breniere Point, and Gard crawled forward to take an oar. Nance did the same, and so set Bernel free to scull and steer, the arrangement which dire experience has taught the Sark men as best adapted to their rock-strewn waters and racing currents.

Gard's mind was in a tumult of revolt, but he sensibly drove his feelings through his muscles to the blade of his oar, and said nothing.

Nance and Bernel were not likely to have gone to these lengths without what seemed to them sufficient reason.

And he remembered Nance's trembling arm on the Coupee, and her agonies of fear on his account, and so came by degrees to a certain acceptance of their view of matters, and therewith a feeling of grat.i.tude for their labours and risks on his behalf. For he did not doubt that, should the self-appointed administrators of justice learn who had baulked them of their prey, they would wreak upon them some of the vengeance they had intended for himself.

He saw that it was no light matter these two had undertaken, and as he thought it over, and told the black welter under his oar what he thought of these wild and hot-headed Sark men, his grat.i.tude grew.

The thin orange sickle of a moon rose at last, high by reason of the mists banked thick along the horizon, and afforded them a welcome glimmer of light--barely a glimmer indeed, rather a mere thinning of the clinging darkness, but enough for Bernel's tutored eye.

He took them in a cautious circuit outside the Quette d'Amont, the eastern sentinel of L'Etat, and so, with s.h.i.+pped oars, by means of his single scull astern, brought them deftly to the riven black ledges round the corner on the south side.

It is a precarious landing at best, and the after scramble up the crumbling slope calls for caution even in the light of day. In that misleading darkness, clinging with his hands and climbing on the sides of his feet, and starting at startled feathered things that squawked and fluttered from under his groping hands and feet, Gard found it no easy matter to follow Nance, though she carried a great bundle and waited for him every now and again. When he looked down next day upon the way they had come he marvelled that they had ever reached the top in safety.

”Wait here!” she said at last, when they had attained a somewhat level place, and before he had breath for a word she was away down again.

She was back presently with another bundle, and he started when she thrust into his hands a long gun, and bade him pick up the first bundle and follow her. The feel of the gun brought home to him, as nothing else could have done, her and Bernel's views of possible contingencies.

He followed her stumblingly along the rough crown of the ridge, till she dipped down a rather smoother slope and came to a stand before what seemed to him a heap of huge stones.

”There is shelter in here,” she said. ”And these things are for your comfort. We will bring you more to eat in a day or two--”

”Nance, dear,” he said, dropping the gun and the bundle, and laying his hand on her slim shoulder. ”I have become a sore burden to you--”

”Oh no, no!” she said hastily. ”You would have done as much for me, and it is because--”

”For you, dear? I would give my life for you, Nance, and here it is you who are doing everything, and running all these risks for me.”

”It is because I know they are in the wrong. It may be only a day or two, and they will thank me when they find out their mistake.”

”Well, I thank you and Bernel with my whole heart. Please G.o.d I may some time be able to repay you!”

”If you are safe, that is all we want. Now I must go. We must get back before they miss us.”

”G.o.d keep you, dear!” and he bent and kissed her, and as before she kissed him back with the frankness of a child.

He was about to follow her when she turned to go, but she said imperatively, ”Stop here, or you may lose yourself in the dark. And in the day-time do not walk on the ridge or they may see you--”

”And the gun? What is that for?”

”If they should come here after you, you will keep them off with it,”

she said, with a spurt of the true Island spirit. ”It is your life they seek, and they are in the wrong. But no one ever comes here, and you will not need it. Now, good-bye! And G.o.d have you in His keeping!”