The Mermaid by Lily Dougall (portable ebook reader TXT) 📕

of them, a cape of rock was seen jutting across the beach, its rocky headland stretching far into the sea. Caius believed that the end of their journey was near; he looked eagerly at the new land, and saw that there were houses upon the top of the cliff. It seemed unnecessary even to ask if this was their destination. Secure in his belief, he willingly got off the cart at the base of the cliff, and trudged behind it, while O'Shea drove up a track in the sand which had the similitude of a road; rough, soft, precipitous as it was, it still bore tracks of wheels and feet, where too far inland to be washed by the waves. The sight of them was like the sight of shore to one who has been long at sea. They went up to the back of the cliff, and came upon its high grassy top; the road led through where small houses were thickly clustered on either side. Caius looked for candle, or fire, or human being, and saw none, and they had not travelled far along the street of this lifeless village when he saw that the road led on down the other side of the headland, and that the beach and the dune stretched ahead of them exactly as they stretched behind.

"Is this a village of the dead?" he asked O'Shea.

The man O'Shea seemed to have in him some freak of perverseness which made it hard for him to answer the simplest question. It was almost by force that Caius got from him the explanation that the village was only used during certain fishing seasons, and abandoned during the winter--unless, indeed, its houses were broken into by shipwrecked sailors, whose lives depended upon finding means of warmth.

The cart descended from the cliff by the same sandy road, and the pony again trotted upon the beach; its trot was deceptive, for it had the appearance of making more way than it did. On they went--on, on, over this wonderful burnished highroad which the sea and the moonlight had laid for their travel. Behind and before, look as they would, they could see only the weird white hills of sand, treeless, almost shadowless now, the seahorses foaming and plunging in endless line, and between them the road, whose apparent narrowing in the far perspective was but an emblem of the truth that the waves were encroaching upon it inch by inch.


CHAPTER V.

DEVILRY.

When the cart and its little company had travelled for almost another hour, a dark object in the midst of the line of foam caught their sight. It was the boy who first saw it, and he suddenly leaned forward, clutching O'Shea's arm as if in fear.

The man looked steadily.

"She's come in since we passed here before."

The boy apparently said something, although Caius could not catch the voice.

"No," said O'Shea; "there's cargo aboard of her yit, but the men are off of her."

It was a black ship that, sailless and with masts pitifully aslant, was fixed on the sand among the surf, and the movement of the water made her appear to labour forward as if in dying throes making effort to reach the shore.

The boy seemed to scan the prospect before him now far more eagerly than before; but the wreck, which was, as O'Shea said, deserted, seemed to be the only external object in all that gleaming waste. They passed on, drawing up for a minute near her at the boy's instigation, and scanning her decks narrowly as they were washed by the waves, but there was no sign of life. Before they had gone further Caius caught sight of the dark outline of another wreck; but this one was evidently of some weeks' standing, for the masts were gone and the hulk half broken through. There was still another further out. The mere repetition of the sad story had effect to make the scene seem more desolate. It seemed as if the sands on which they trod must be strewed with the bleached skeletons of sailors, and as if they embedded newly-buried corpses in their breast. The sandhills here were higher than they had been before, and there were openings between them as if passages led into the interior valleys, so that Caius supposed that here in storms or in flood-tides the waves might enter into the heart of the dune.

They had not travelled far beyond the first and nearest wreck, when the monotony of their journey was broken by a sudden strange excitement which seized on them all, and which Caius, although he felt it, did not at once understand.

The pony was jerked back by the reins which O'Shea held, then turned staggering inland, and lashed forward by the whip, used for the first time that day. Caius, jerked against the side of the cart, lifted up a bruised head, gazing in wonder to see nothing in the path; but he saw that the boy had sprung lightly from the cart, and was standing higher up on the sand, his whole attitude betraying alarm as he gazed searchingly at the ground.

In a moment the pony reared and plunged, and then uttered a cry almost human in its fear. Then came the sensation of sinking, sinking with the very earth itself. O'Shea had jumped from the cart and cut the traces. Caius was springing out, and felt his spring guided by a hand upon his arm. He could not have believed that the boy had so much strength, yet, with a motion too quick for explaining words, he was guided to a certain part of the sand, pushed aside like a child to be safe, while the boy with his next agile movement tugged at the portmanteaus that contained the medical stores, and flung them at Caius' feet.

It was a quicksand. The pony cried again--cried to them for help. Caius next found himself with O'Shea holding the creature's head, and aiding its mad plunging, even while his own feet sank deeper and deeper. There was a moment when they all three plunged forward together, and then the pony threw itself upon its side, by some wild effort extricating its feet, and Caius, prone upon the quivering head, rolled himself and dragged it forward. Then he felt strong hands lifting him and the horse together.

What seemed strangest to Caius, when he could look about and think, was that he had now four companions--the boy, O'Shea, and two other men, coated and muffled--and that the four were all talking together eagerly in a language of which he did not understand a word.

He shook the wet sand from his clothes; his legs and arms were wet. The pony stood in an entrance to a gap in the sand-hills, quivering and gasping, but safe, albeit with one leg hurt. The cart had sunk down till its flat bottom lay on the top of the quicksand, and there appeared to float, for it sunk no further. A white cloud that had winged its way up from the south-west now drifted over the moon, and became black except at its edges. The world grew much darker, and it seemed colder, if that were possible.

It soon occurred to Caius that the two men now added to their party had either met O'Shea by appointment, or had been lying in wait for the cart, knowing that the quicksand was also waiting to engulf it. It appeared to him that their motives must be evil, and he was not slow to suspect O'Shea of being in some plot with them. He had, of course, money upon him, enough certainly to attract the cupidity of men who could seldom handle money, and the medical stores were also convertible into money. It struck him now how rash he had been to come upon this lonely drive without any assurance of O'Shea's respectability.

These thoughts came to him because he almost immediately perceived that he was the subject of conversation. It seemed odd to stand so near them and not understand a word they said. He heard enough now to know the language they were speaking was the patois that, in those parts, is the descendant of the Jersey French. These men, then, were Acadians--the boy also, for he gabbled freely to them. Either they had sinister designs on him, or he was an obstruction to some purpose that they wished to accomplish. This was evident now from their tones and gestures. They were talking most vehemently about him, especially the boy and O'Shea, and it was evident that these two disagreed, or at least could not for some time agree, as to what was to be his fate.

Caius was defenceless, for so peaceful was the country to which he was accustomed that he carried no weapon. He took his present danger little to heart. There was a strange buoyancy--born, no doubt, of the bracing wind--in his spirit. If they were going to kill him--well, he would die hard; and a man can but die once. A laugh arose from the men; it sounded to him as strange a sound, for the time and place, as the almost human cry of the horse a few minutes before. Then O'Shea came towards him with menacing gestures. The two men went back into the gap of the sand-hills from whence they must have come.

"Look here," said O'Shea roughly, "do ye value your life?"

"Certainly."

Caius folded his arms, and made this answer with well-bred contempt.

"And ye shall have your life, but on one condition. Take out of your bags what's needed for dealing with the sick this noight, for there's a dying man ye must visit before ye sleep, and the condition is that ye walk on to The Cloud by yourself on this beach without once looking behoind ye. Moind what I say! Ye shall go free--yerself, yer money, and yer midicines--if ye walk from here to the second house that is a loighthouse without once turning yer head or looking behoind ye." He pointed to the bags with a gesture of rude authority. "Take out what ye need, and begone!"

"I shall do nothing of the sort," replied Caius, his arms still folded.

The boy had come near enough to hear what was said, but he did not interfere.

"And why not?" asked O'Shea, a jeer in his tones.

"Because I would not trust one of you not to kill me as soon as my back was turned."

"And if your back isn't turned, and that pretty quick, too, ye'll not live many hours."

"I prefer to die looking death in the face; but it'll be hard for the man who attempts to touch me."

"Oh! ye think ye'll foight for it, do ye?" asked O'Shea lightly; "but ye're mistaken there--the death ye shall doie will admit of no foighting on your part."

"There is something more in all this business than I understand." Apart from the question whether he should die or live, Caius was puzzled to understand why his enemies had themselves fallen foul of the quicksand, or what connection the accident could have with the attack upon his life. "There is more in this than I understand," he repeated loudly.

"Just so," replied O'Shea, imperturbable; "there is more than ye can understand, and I offer ye a free passage to a safe place. Haven't ye wits enough about ye to take it and be thankful?"

"I will not turn my back." Caius reiterated his defiance.

"And ye'll stroike out with yer fist at whatever comes to harm ye? Will ye hit in the face of the frost