Carette of Sark Part 45

After that we sought the sea-cave each time we woke, and whenever the light was in it we sat there, and ate, and talked of all we had done, and thought, and feared, and hoped, during those long months when we were apart. And once and again Carette fell on earlier times still, and we were boy and girl together under the Autelets and Tintageu, or swimming in Havre Gosselin, and trembling through the Gouliot caves behind Krok's tapping stick. And we talked of Aunt Jeanne's party, and our Riding Day, and Black Boy, and Gray Robin. And she told me much of the Miss Maugers, and their school, and her school-fellows. And at times she fell silent, and I knew she had sudden thought of her brother Helier. But, you see, she had so long thought of him as dead, that the fact that he had died later than she had supposed had not the power to cloud her greatly. And perhaps the fact that we were together, and going to part no more, was not without its effect on her spirits.

And I told her more fully than I had done of all that had happened to me on Herm, and on the French s.h.i.+p in the West Indies, and at Amperdoo, and of our escape into France in the preventive officers' boat, and of that last desperate pull across from Surtainville.

"But, mon Gyu, Phil, what a strange man!" she said of Torode. "Why should he let you live one time, and try his hardest to kill you another?"

"I do not know. I have puzzled over it to no purpose. Now I have given it up."

"He is perhaps mad," she suggested.

"He did not seem so, except in not making an end of me when he had the chance, and that truly was madness on his part."

The time was never long with us, for we were strangely set apart from time and its pa.s.sage. We ate and slept, and talked and walked, just whenever the inclination came, and measurements of time we had none. But Aunt Jeanne's pie was finished and we were down to the ham bone, and what little bread and gache we had left was growing hard, and by that Carette said we had been there at least three days, and we looked for George Hamon's coming at any moment, except when the tunnel was growling and the Boutiques roaring and sobbing.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

HOW LOVE FOUGHT DEATH IN THE DARK

I woke from a very sound sleep with a start, and lay with a creeping of the back and half asleep still, wondering what I had heard.

It was dark, with a blackness of darkness to be felt, and all was very still, which meant that the tide was out, so it was probably early morning.

But it seemed to me that a sound unusual to the place lingered in my ear, and I lay with straining senses.

It was not such a sound, it seemed to me, as Carette might have made in her sleep or in wakening, but something altogether foreign and discordant.

Whether, in my sudden wakening, I had made some sound, I do not know, but there had been heavy silence since. And in that thick silence and darkness I became aware of another presence in the place besides our own,--by what faculty I know not, but something told me that we were not alone. My very hair bristled, but I had the sense to lie still, and there was in me a great agony of fear lest Carette should move and draw upon herself I knew not what.

Safety seemed to lie in silence, for I knew that other, whatever it was, was listening as I was.

I held my breath, but my heart was thumping so that it seemed impossible that it should not be heard. From the place where Carette lay I could not hear a sound, not even the sound of her breathing.

I think I must have burst soon if that state of matters had continued.

Every drop of blood in my body seemed throbbing in my head just back of my ears, and all the rest of me was cold and tense with the strain. It was like waiting on a fearsome black day of thunder for the storm to break.

Then I heard a movement close to me where I lay on the ground, and, like the lightning out of the thundercloud, there came the click of steel on flint and I breathed soundlessly. It was, at all events, human.

And then my breath caught again. For the tiny lightning flash that came out of the flint lit, with one brief gleam, the face of the man to whom my death was as necessary as the breath of life,--whose presence there held most dreadful menace for us both,--Torode of Herm.

For one moment life stood still with me. For here, in this close darkness, were we three within arm's length of one another;--the man I had reason to fear and hate above any other on earth, and the price of whose life was my own, a price I would not pay; the woman whose life was dearer to me than my own, for whom I would gladly pay any price, even the utmost; and myself, by force of circ.u.mstances, the unwilling link that had brought them both there, and the menace to both their lives, for Torode came for me and Carette came with me.

The wheels of life began to turn for me again, and my hand felt stealthily along the ledge at my side, where George Hamon's pistol had lain ever since he gave it to me.

Thoughts surged in my brain like the long western waves in the Boutiques, all in a wild confusion. This man had spared my life. He had come to take it. Carette was at stake.

I knew what I had to do--if I could do it.

He struck again with the steel, and as he bent to blow the tinder into flame his eye caught the gleam of it on Aunt Jeanne's polished milk-can. I know not what he thought it. Possibly his nerves were overstrung with what he had been going through. With an oath he dropped the tinder, and s.n.a.t.c.hed out a pistol, and fired in the direction of the can. And as the blaze lit up the great black bulk of him I stood up quickly and fired also,--and, before G.o.d, I think I was justified, for it was his life or ours.

The place bellowed with the shots, and the air was thick with smoke and the sharp smell of powder. No sound came from the floor, and I stood holding the pistol by the muzzle to strike him down again if he should rise. But he did not move, and my fears were not for him.

"Carette!" I cried. "Carette!"

And my love rose suddenly with a cry and fell sobbing into my arms.

"Oh, Phil! Phil! What is it? I thought you were dead."

"Dieu merci, it is he who is dead, I think. We will see," and I managed a light with my flint and steel and knelt down by the fallen man.

"Who is it?" asked Carette, breathless still.

"It is Monsieur Torode."

"Torode!" she gasped, and bent with me to make sure. "Bon Dieu, how came he here?"

"That I don't know. This seems not the hiding-place Uncle George supposed.

I was wakened by his trying to strike a light, and I thought he was a ghost."

I hoped he was dead, and so an end to all our fears from him. But I found him still breathing, though but faintly, and he had not his senses. I dragged him across to my bed and sought for his wound, and found it at last in the head. Either the old pistol had cast high, or my sudden up-jump, or his down-bending, had upset my aim. For the shot had entered the side of his head at the back, just above the ear, and as I could find no hole whence it had issued it was probably in his head still. The wound had bled very little, but beyond his slow, heavy breathing he gave no sign of life.

On the floor, where he had fallen, I found a seaman's torch, which had been lighted but was now sodden with water. He had probably dropped it or dragged it in some pool as he made his way into the cave.

And, now that the hot anger and the fear of the man were out of me, and he lay under my hand helpless to do us further harm, I found myself ready to do what I could for him, since, unfortunately, he was not dead.

I took Uncle George at his word and broached one of his little kegs, and found it most excellent French cognac, and mixing some with water in the lid of the can, I prevailed on Carette to drink some too. We had both been not a little shaken by these happenings, and the fiery life in the spirit pulled us together and braced the slackened ropes. I dropped a little into Torode also, and it ran down his throat, but he showed no sign of appreciation, and I doubted the fine liquor was wasted.

Then, as there was no chance of sleep, I lit my pipe and found comfort in it, and regretted that Carette had no similar consolation of her own, though I do not take to women smoking as I have seen many of them do abroad. But there was not even a crust to eat, so we sat and talked in whispers of the very strange fate, or chance, or the leading of G.o.d, that had brought Torode to us in this remote place into which we had fled to escape him.

"But, Phil, however did he get here?" asked Carette. "For Uncle George said that no living man--?"

"It was that made me think him a ghost," I said, "until I heard his flint and steel, which no ghost needs."

"Did he come in the way we did?"

"He was standing just there when I woke. I'll go and look," and I crept away down the narrow way till I found myself against the piled stones which blocked it, and felt certain that no one had pa.s.sed that way since George Hamon went out and closed the door behind him. I heard the in-coming tide gurgling in the channel outside, and returned to Carette much puzzled.

"He must have come by way of the Boutiques," I said, "for those stones have not been moved."

"And yet Uncle George seemed certain that no one besides himself knew of this place. 'No living man'--that is what he said."

"He'll be the more surprised when he comes," I said, and we left it there.

The sight of Monsieur Torode lying there like a dead man was not a cheerful one, so we left him and went to our usual place by the water-cave.

And, when we came to the well, Carette said, "Ugh! it looks as if it knew all about it," and the bulging eye of the spring goggled furiously at us as we pa.s.sed.

We had nothing to eat all that day, but drinks of water, mixed now and then with a little cognac. For myself it did not matter much, for I had my pipe, but I felt keenly for Carette. She would not admit that she was hungry, but during the afternoon she fell asleep leaning against me, and I sat very still lest I should waken her to her hunger. And her face as it lay against my arm was like the face of a saint, so sweet and pure and heedless of the world.