Hall Caine

“ Danny watched the old man when he whispered into the dead ear the words of the mystic charm. He turned his eyes to the sinuous trail of light behind him. All night long he lay on deck with only the dead for company. He saw the other men, but did not speak to them. It was as though he himself were already a being of another world, and could hold no commerce with his kind.
He thought of Mona, and then his heart was near to breaking. With a dumb longing his eyes turned through the darkness toward the land. The boat that was sailing before the wind was carrying him away from her forever. ”

“ Mona glanced up into his face. "Can this be Christian?" she thought.
"Where one man sets himself apart for one woman," he continued, "there is true marriage, whether the mystic symbol of the Church be used or not. No; I've feared the world too long. I mean to face it now."
"I'm afraid I don't understand, Christian," answered Mona. "But surely to defy the world is foolishness, and marriage is a holy thing."
He stopped, and, with a smile, kissed the girl tenderly. "Never fear, darling—that shall be made as the world wants it. ”

“ She finished with the story of the flight of the four men to Kisseck's cottage, the quarreling there, the pistol–shot, and the strange answer to her knock.
Mylrea Balladhoo stood still with the stupid, bewildered look of one who has been dealt an unexpected and dreadful blow. The world seemed to be crumbling under him. At that first instant there was something like a ghastly smile playing over his pallid face. Then the truth came rolling over his soul. The sight was fearful to look upon. He fell back with a low moan. But the good God sent the stricken old man the gift of tears. ”

“ The wind clamored louder every minute. Timbers cut away from the fishing-boat were swept up with every wave. The surf around the rocks was like snow. The water was beaten into seething foam around the boat also; between the billows the long swell was red with the reflection of the fire, but the sea was black as ink beyond the line of the Castle Isle, save where, at the farthest line of wave and sky, a streak of ashen light shone in the darkness.
Danny had coiled the rope from end to end around his waist. Then he stood and waited. He knew that the tide must soon turn. ”

“ Mona's anxiety was greatest now that her hope seemed least. Rescue the men—Christian being one of them—she must, God helping her. Like a sorceress, whose charm has worked only too fatally, Mona's whole soul was engaged to break her own deadly spell. She conceived a means of escape, but she could not without help bring her design to bear. Would this lad help her? Danny? She had seen the agony of his despair wither up the last gleam of sunshine on his poor, helpless face.
"Did you say that Mr. Kinvig is to be with the men in the castle?" ”

“ Oh, these dead joys, they want the deepest grave.
Christian turned again to his weary task. To live was a duty, and live he must. His fingers were chilled to the bone. His clothes still clung like damp cerements to his body. The meagre blades of the scissors were worn short. They could not last long. Christian rose to his feet on the ledge of rock and plunged the scissors into the blank wall above him. Ah! what fresh disaster was this? His hand went deep into soft earth; the vein of rock had finished, and all that was above it must be loose, uncertain mould! ”

“ Thus hour after hour, tottering feebly at Mona's side, leaning sometimes on the girl's arm, the old man poured forth his grief. At one moment, as they stood by the ruined end of the pier, and Danny's gorse fire glowed red over the Lockjaw Creek, and the moon broke through a black rain-cloud over the town, the sorrowing man turned calmly to Mona and said, with a strange resignation: "I will be quiet. Christian is dead. Surely I shall quiet myself as a child that is weaned of its mother. Yes, my soul is even as a weaned child." ”

“ The sun rose over the land, a thin gauze obscuring it. The red light flashed and died away as if the wind were the sunshine. The haggard faces of the men caught at moments a lurid glow from it. In the west a mass of bluish cloud rested a little while on the horizon, and then passed into a nimbus of gray rain-cloud that floated above it. Such was the dawn and sunrise of a fateful day.
They were sailing north; they had no haven in their view. But Peel was behind them. Think what home is to the fisherman who goes down into the great deep. Then know that to them home could be all this no longer. ”

“ And as yet the lad had not once reflected that if Mona did not love him it was, perhaps, because she loved another.
"He isn't going," continued Danny.
"Thank God," said Mona, fervently. "And Kisseck, does he still mean to go?"
"Ay, of coorse he's going. It'll be to-morrow, it seems. I'm to go, too."
"Danny, you must not go," said Mona, dropping Ruby's hand to take hold of the lad's arm. He glanced up vacantly.
"Seems to me it doesn't matter much what I do," he said.
"But it does matter, Danny. What these men are attempting is crime—black, cruel, pitiless crime—murder, no less." ”

“ A broad grin crossed the face of Kerruish Kinvig as he added:
"But I tell you what, when you get your white choker under your gills, and you do come down among the like of these people with your tracts, and your hymns, and all those rigs, and your face uncommon solemn, and your voice like a gannet—none of your sweethearting, my man. Look at that girl Mona, now. It isn't reasonable to think you're not putting notions into the girl's head. It's a shame, man." "You're right, Mr. Kinvig," said Christian, under his breath, "a cursed shame." ”

“ At some thrilling moment, if Heaven had so ordered it, they two, she and this simple lad, might have uncovered to the other the bleeding wound that each carried hidden in the breast. And that great moment was yet to come, though she knew it not.
Love is a selfish thing, let us say what we will of it besides.
"Danny," said Mona, "have you seen anything more of Christian?"
"Yes," said the lad. Some momentary remorse on Mona's part compelled her to glance into Danny's face. There was no trace of feeling there. It was baffled love, and not jealousy, that had taken the joy out of Danny's life. ”

“ Christian had just returned home, and Mylrea Balladhoo, stern on the outside, tender at the core, loving his son as the one thing left to him to love, had forgiven everything—disgrace, ingratitude, and impoverishment—and taken back the prodigal without a word.
And, in truth, there was something so winsome in the young fellow's reckless, devil-may-care indifference that he got at the right side of people's affections in spite of themselves. ”

“ The men were tearing open an old vault. There was some muttering, and one of the men seemed to protest. "Stop!" he cried; "I'm not going to have a hand in a job like this. I'm bad enough, God knows, but no man shall say that I helped to violate a grave."
Danny shook from head to foot. He knew that voice. Just then the sea-swallow shot again overhead, uttering its low, mournful cry. At the same instant Danny thought he heard a half-stiffed moan not far from his side, and once more his ear caught that soft rustling sound. Quivering in every limb, he could not stir. He must stand and be silent. ”

“ One grizzled old fisherman took Danny by the arm, and would have held him. But at the first glimpse of the reef that ran across the highest and narrowest point of the strait, the lad shook himself free, and bounded across to the Castle Isle.
"Brave Danny," said Mona, in a deep whisper.
"Brave? Is it brave? Aw, well, it's mad I'm calling it," said the old salt.
There is a steep pathway under the east wall of the castle. It runs up from the shore to a great height above the water. It is narrow enough to be called a ledge, and the rocks beneath it fall well–nigh precipitously. ”

“ They had placed the body of the master by the hatchways, and again and again they turned their heads toward it in the darkness. It was as though the body might even yet stand up in their midst, and any man at any moment might find it face to face with him, eye to eye. The certainty that it was dead had not taken hold of all of them. It still bled, and one of the crew, Quilleash, an old man reputed to possess a charm to stop blood, knelt down beside Kisseck, and whispered in his ear. ”

“ If madness be the symbol on earth of the tortures of the damned, Danny had then a few hours' blessed respite. He saw calmly what he had done and why he had done it. "Surely, God is just," he thought: "surely He will not condemn me; surely, surely not." Then, amid surging inward tears, which his eyes refused to shed, the simple lad tried to recall the good words that he had heard in the course of his poor, neglected, battered life. ”

“ Thus despair took hold of them and drove all fear away. Each hard man, with despair seated on his rugged face, longed, like a sick child, to lay his head in the lap of home.
"What's it saying?" muttered the old man Quilleash, "'A green hill when far away; bare, bare when it is near.'"
It was some vague sense of their hopelessness that was floating through the old man's mind as he recalled the pathetic Manx proverb. The others looked down at the deck with a stony stare.
Danny still lay forward. ”

“ A ponderous silver watch hung round the arms of the crucifix, and a frying-pan was suspended in the recess of the window that was consecrated to the Madonna.
Such was the kitchen and state-room of the Jolly Herrings; and no apartment ever spoke more plainly to those who had ears to hear of the character and habits of its owners. The house was kept by a woman who was thin, wrinkled, and blear-eyed; and by a man who was equally thin and no less wrinkled, but had quick, suspicious eyes, and a few spiky gray hairs about the chin that resembled the whiskers of a cat. ”

“ The strait was very narrow—sixty feet at most from the shore to the rocks. Yet what a toilsome journey to the man who was wading off with the rope. The tide was flowing and near the top. It never rose higher than four or five feet in this channel. A man might cross it if the swell did not sweep him back.
Through the boiling surf, piercingly cold, Christian struggled bravely. He was young and strong. He reached the boat at last. It was prancing like an unbroken horse. But waiting for a receding wave, he rushed in, laid firm hold of the first man at hand, and carried him back to the shore. ”

“ Danny's Contrary fire, which had smoldered all day, showed brightly again.
"Oh, how glad I am that all is over," repeated the girl, creeping closer beneath Christian's arm. "You said to-night to your father that a secret sin is a corroding thing. How truly I've felt it so when I've thought of my own poor father. You never knew him. He died before you came to us. He was a good, simple man, and loved us, though perhaps he left us poorer than we might have been, and more troubled than we were in the old days at Glen Rushen." ”

“ To remain down the shaft would also be certain death. To climb to the surface was impossible. Christian's heart sank. His position was terrible. This conflict of soul did not last long. The heart soon clung to the nearest hope. Cry for help he must; be dragged out of this grave he should, let the issue be what it could or would. To lie here and die was not human. To live in the living present was the first duty, the first necessity, be the price of life no less than future death.
Christian reflected that the police, when he heard their footsteps, had been running to Lockjaw Creek. ”

“ The deep, thick boom of the sea came from the shore far behind, and the thin, low plash of broken waters from the rocks beneath. The footsteps had ceased now, but Danny could hear voices. He rose to his feet and walked toward whence they came.
He found himself outside the crumbling walls of the roofless chapel of St. Patrick. He heard noises from within, and crouched behind a stone. Presently a light was struck. It lighted all the air above it. Danny crept up to the chapel wall and peered in at one of the lancet windows.
A company of men were there, but he could not distinguish their faces. ”

“ The men stood neither on the order of their coming nor their going, their sitting nor their standing. They wore their caps or not as pleased them, they sang or talked as suited them, they laughed or sneezed, they sulked or snarled, were noisy or silent precisely as the whim of the individual prescribed the individual rule of manners. The chair at the Jolly Herrings was a position of more distinction than duty, and it was numbered among Christian's virtues that he had never attempted to exercise an arbitrary control over the liberties of free-born Manxmen. ”

“ As he did so Mona and Christian came up. Christian stood opposite his father on the other side of the corpse; the old man on his knees, the son on his feet, the dead man between them.
The others stood around. None spoke. Then Mona, motioning Christian to silence, stepped up to Balladhoo and knelt beside him. It was better that he should realize the truth by degrees and not too suddenly. He would see the face, and know that it was not the face of his son. Mona, on her part, knew it would be Danny's face. And the boy was dead. The beating of her heart fell low. ”

“ Then he turned his head aside and looked away over the sea. Only Heaven knew what his thoughts were in that bitter hour—that blessed hour—that hour of sorrow and of glory. In this world his days were done. For Kisseck's death, what remained to him among men? ”