John Oxenham

“ The narrow beach between the tawny headlands is black with people. Up above, on the edge of the cliff, another crowd peers curiously down.
The Sénéchal is there at the water's edge, Philip Guille of La Ville, and the Greffier, William Robert, who is also the schoolmaster, and Thomas Le Masurier the Prévôt, and Elie Guille the Constable, and Dr. Stradling from Dixcart, and the dark-faced, fierce-eyed woman who cannot keep still, but ranges to and fro in the lip of the tide, and whom they all know now as the wife—the Frenchwoman, though some of them have never seen her before. ”

“ There was certainly something lighter than the surrounding darkness down below, and it moved. It turned the corner and flitted along the slope, slowly but surely, in the direction of his shelter. Its mode of progression, from the little he could make out in the darkness, was just such as he would have looked for in a huge octopus hauling itself along by its tentacles over the out-cropping rock-bones.
He could not rest there. He must see. He crawled along the ridge as quietly as he could manage it, and would have felt happier, whatever it was, spirit or monster, if he had had his gun. ”

“ And Gard turned and went over to Nance and Bernel, who were sheltering from the storm in lee of one of the cottages.
If he could have seen it, there was a warmer feeling in her heart for him than had ever been there before—a novel feeling, too, of respect and confidence such as she had never entertained towards any other man in all her life.
For that quick blow had been struck on her behalf, she knew; and it was vastly strange, and somehow good, to feel that a great strong man was ready to stand up for her and, if necessary, to fight for her. ”

“ It was the eeriest experience he had ever had, that nightly trip across the Coupée;—bad enough when moon or stars afforded him vague and distorted glimpses of his ghostly surroundings:—ten times worse when the flicker of his lantern barely kept him to the path, and the broken gleams ran over the rugged edges and tumbled into the black gulfs at the sides;—when every starting shadow might be a murderer leaping out upon him, every foot of the walling darkness the murderer's cover, and every step he took a step towards death.
A trip, I assure you, that not many men would have been capable of. ”

“ But when moon and stars alike are wanting, then the darkness of a Sark lane is a thing to be felt, and—if you should happen to be a little girl of eight, with a large imagination and sharp ears that have picked up fearsome stories of witches and ghosts and evil spirits—to be mortally feared.
Tom had a wholesome dread of such things himself. But the fear of fourteen, in a great strong body and no heavenly spark of imagination, is not to be compared with the fear of eight and a mind that could quiver like a harp even at its own imaginings. ”

“ If she had never come into the family there would have been no Nance, no Bernel, no selling of the farm, maybe. A movement of the arms, the crooking of a finger, and things would be even between them.
But—it would still be he who would have to pay—as always!
All through he had been the sufferer, and if he did this thing he must suffer still more—always he who must pay.
The man who hesitates is lost, or saved. When the contemplator of evil deeds begins also to contemplate consequences, reason is beginning to resume her sway.
Then he heard heavy footsteps and voices. His father and Stephen Gard. ”

“ He lay there till the sun had gone, and the pale green and amber, and the crimson and gold of his going had slowly passed from sea and sky, and left them grey and cold; till a single light shone out on Sark, which he knew must be in one of the miners' cottages, and many lights twinkled in Guernsey; till beneath him he could no longer see the sea, but only the white foam fury as it boiled along the rocks. Then he crept away to his burrow, rejoicing in the thought of the companionship of a fire and hot food. ”

“ And again that night, as he sat on the ridge on sentinel duty till the rising tide should lock the doors of his castle, the sea all round him shone with phosphorescence; every breaking wave along the black plain was a lambent gleam of lightning, and where they tore up the sides of his rock they were like flames out of a fiery sea, so that he sat there looking down upon a weltering band of nickering green and blue fires, which clung to the black ledges and dripped slowly back into the seething gleam below. ”

“ So to the Creux, panting the news as he went. And there, willing hands dragged a boat rasping down the shingle, and lusty arms, four men rowing and one astern sculling and steering at the same time, sent her bounding over the water as though it were life she sought, not death. For, though no man among them had any smallest hope of finding life in that which lay under the cliff, yet must they strain every muscle, till the labouring boat seemed to share their anxiety to get there and learn the worst. ”

“ During the first days he spent much of his time crouched in the lee of his bee-hive, watching the terrific play of the waves on his own rock and on the Sark headlands.
He wondered if any other man had seen such a storm under such conditions. For he was practically at sea on a rock; in the midst of the turmoil, yet absolutely unaffected by it.
On shipboard, thought of one's ship and possible consequences had always interfered with fullest enjoyment of Nature's paroxysms. It was impossible to detach one's thoughts completely and view matters entirely from the outside. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nance looked up quickly at the sound of Gard's feet, and the paled-brown of her face flushed red at sight of him, and then a grateful gleam lighted it as he dropped her things into her hand and bent over John Thomas, who was showing signs of life in a dazed and water-logged fashion.
"You did splendidly, you two," he said to Bernel. "It's a grand thing to save a man's life, even if it's only John Thomas," for John Thomas had found this land of free spirits too much for him, and had become a soaker and an indifferent workman. ”

“ But even devil-fishes in their most advanced stages have not yet attained the power of human speech. If they speak to one another what a horrible sound it must be!
It was with a sigh of relief, and a sudden unstringing of the bow, that he heard outside—
"Mr. Gard!" and with a lusty kick, which expressed some of his feeling, he sent his doorway flying and crawled out after it.
The myriad winking stars lifted the roof of the world and the darkness somewhat, sufficient at all events for him to make out that it was not Nance.
"You, Bernel?" he queried, as the only possible alternative. ”

“ In a minute or two they were scrambling up the slope and flung themselves down beside him for a rest, feeling the strain of unusual exertion now that the brace and tonic of the water was off them.
"You are bold swimmers," said Gard.
"She's a fish in the water," said Bernel, "and she made me swim almost as soon as I could walk."
"You see," said Nance, in her decisive little way, "many of our Sark men won't learn to swim. They think it's mistrusting God. But that seems to me foolish. Every man who goes down to the sea ought to be able to swim—besides, it's terribly nice." ”

“ Julie was ranging up and down the narrow pathway, searching the depths with a face like a hawk, hanging on to the rough sides of the pinnacles, and bending over in a way that elicited warning cries from the others as they came streaming down.
But keenest search of the western slope revealed nothing amid its tangle of gorse and blackberry bushes, and the eastern cliff fell so sheer, and had so many projecting lumps and underfalls, that it was impossible to see close in to the foot. ”

“ Nance walked to the highest point behind Brenière, and waved her white garment a dozen times to let Gard know she was safe, and then turned and set off home through the waist-high bracken and the great cushions of gorse. And close alongside her went Julie, raging and raving the worse for her silence; for there is nothing so galling to an angry soul as to find its most venomous shafts fall harmless from the triple mail of quiet self-possession. ”

“ Ranging on, his eye rested on the shattered fragments of Little Sark, scattered broadcast over the sea about its most southerly point—bare black pinnacles, ragged ledges, islets, rocklets, reefs, and fangs, every one of which seemed to stir the placid sea to wildest wrath. Elsewhere it danced and dimpled in the sunshine, with only the long slow heave in it to tell of the sleeping giant below, but round each rock, and up the sides of his own huge pyramid, it swept in great green combers shot with bubbling white, and went tumbling back upon itself in rings of boiling foam. ”

“ Four boat-loads! That ought to be enough to make full sure of him. He wondered why they had not come sooner, for the tide was on the rise, and the landing-places did not look tempting.
His gun was under his hand, and his powder-flask and his little bag of shot. He had no more preparations to make, and he had no wish to fight.
No wish? The thought of it was hateful to him, and yet it was not in human nature to give in without a struggle.
But it should be all their doing. All he wanted was to be left in peace. Every man has the right to defend his own life. ”

“ Down in Grande Grève, on his right, the waves rolled in almost without a sound, as though they feared to disturb the darkness. From the intervening moments he could tell how slowly they crept to their curve. Their fall was a soft sibilation, a long-drawn sigh. The ever-restless sea for once seemed falling to sleep.
And then, as he listened into the darkness, a tiny elfish glimmer flickered in the void below, flickered and was gone, and he rubbed his eyes for playing him tricks. ”

“ Nance looked upon him merely as a part of the mines, and therefore to be detested along with the noisy engine-house, the pumps, the damp and dirty miners, and all the rest of it—the coming of which had so completely spoiled her much-loved Sark.
Tom disliked him because he made him feel small and boorish, and of a commoner make. And feelings such as that inevitably try to disprove themselves by noisy self-assertion. ”

“ Then the great semi-detached pinnacle below attracted him, and he scrambled down amid the complaints of a great colony of gulls and cormorants but found the tide still too full for him to cross the intervening chasm. Those wonderful great green waves out of a smooth sea came roaring along the sides of the island and met full tilt in the chasm below him, as they leaped exultant from their conflict with the rocks. They hurled themselves against one another in wildest fury, and the foam of their meeting boiled white along the ledges, and dappled all the sea. ”

“ But, dearly as she would have liked to make some provision, however small, for Nance and Bernel, her whole Sark soul was up in arms against the idea of selling the farm.
It would feel like a break-up of life. Nothing, she was sure, would ever be the same again.
"It's not right," she said simply.
"You're a fool—" and then the look on her quiet face—such a look as she might have worn if he had struck her—penetrated the storm-cloud of his anger. He remembered her years of wifely patience and faithful service, "—a foolish woman. A Sark wife should know which side of her bread the butter is on. ”

“ It's a terrible place in a gale."
"You wait," shouted Bernel. "We're not home yet."
"No more Coupées, any way," and they bent again into the storm.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when, through some freakish funnelling of the tumbled headlands, the gale gripped them like a giant playing with pigmies, caught them up, flung them bodily across the road and held Gard and Bernel pinned and panting against the green bank, while Nance disappeared over it into the shrieking darkness. ”

“ All the Islands felt very sore about the new regulations, and our people stick at nothing when their blood is up."
"They do not," said Gard feelingly.
"I'd like to get into that inner cave," said the Doctor longingly.
"You couldn't," said Gard, looking at his size and girth. "It's a mighty tight squeeze under the slab, and that tunnel would beat you. Unless you've been brought up to that kind of thing, you couldn't stand it. It would give you nightmares for the rest of your life."
"That's a rare lass, that little Nance," said the Sénéchal. "There's some good in Sark after all, Mr. Gard." ”

“ As he lay that night, and the gale howled about him more furiously than ever, his thoughts ran constantly on the dead man lying in the silent darkness down below.
It was very quiet down there, and dry; but this roaring turmoil, with its thunderous crashings and hurtling spray, was infinitely more to his taste, wet though he was to the bone, and almost deafened with the ceaseless uproar. For this, terrible though it was in its majestic fury, was life, and that black stillness below was death. ”

“ He saw fishes large and small unconsciously touch the quivering tentacles, which on the instant twisted round them and dragged them in to the rending beak below the hideous eyes. And then he saw another similar monster come floating in on similar quest, and in a moment they were locked in deadly fight—such a writhing and coiling and straining and twisting of monstrous fleshy limbs, which swelled and thrilled, and loosed and gripped, with venom past believing—such a clamping to this rock and that—such tremendous efforts at dislodgment.
It was a nightmare. It sickened him. ”

“ When the moon bathes sea and land in a flood of shimmering silver, or on a clear night of stars—and the stars in Sark, you must know, shine infinitely larger and closer and brighter than in most other places—the darkness below is lifted somewhat by reason of the majestic width and height of the glittering dome above. ”

“ But now and again her tormentor overpassed the bounds and got his reward—to Nance's immediate satisfaction but subsequent increased tribulation. For whenever he got a thrashing on her account he never failed to pay her out in the smaller change of persecution which never came to light.
On a pitch-dark, starless night, the high-hedged—and in places deep-sunk—lanes of Little Sark are as black as the inside of an ebony ruler. ”