A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 41

John Trevna gazed open-mouthed, for he had little breath left in him.

And from the black mouth of the tunnel the strange and terrible figure of the dead man looked quietly down at them and filled them with amazement.

Trevna's heavy charge had blown in the top of the skull. The shrunken yellow face wore the gaunt eager look of one who had died the slow death of starvation. It seemed to be trying to get at them to bite and rend them.

Peter Vaudin was the first to climb the wall behind him, but the rest were close at his heels, and hustled him up through the crack under the slab.

Peter struck down towards the landing-place the moment he had wriggled through.

"Stop then, Peter," called John Drillot, in a low insistent voice, lest that dreadful thing below should hear him.

"Not me! I've had enough, John Drillot. That is not what we came for ...

and I had hold of its leg last night," and he s.h.i.+vered at the recollection, and the thought that it might have turned on him and gripped him with its grisly hands.

"I don't know what it is," began John Drillot, "but--"

"It's the man I shot inside there," said Trevna.

"That man ha.s.s peen det a hundert years," said Morgan.

"All the same, he was running about last night," said Peter, "and I had hold of his leg"--with another s.h.i.+ver.

"He's dead enough now, anyway," said Drillot.

"Eh b'en! leave him where he is, and let's get away. I've heard say there were ghosts on L'Etat, and now I know it. No good comes of meddling with these things."

"But we ought to take him with us."

"Take him with us!" almost shrieked Peter. "And let him loose on Sark!

Why then?"

"Whatever he was last night, he's dead enough now.... Will you help me to get him up, John Trevna?"

"Iss, sure! He's got my belt."

"Not in my boat, John Drillot," cried Peter. "Not in my boat. I've had enough of him, pardi!" and he set off at speed for the boat.

"Don't be a fool, Peter. You, Evan Morgan, run down and stop him going.

Come on, John Trevna," and after peering cautiously down to make sure the dead man had not moved, they dropped into the well again.

The shrivelled figure was very light, as Trevna had found. It was only their repugnance at handling it that made their task a heavy one. One above and one below, they managed at last to get it up above ground, and then John Trevna slipped his belt to its middle, and carried it with one hand down the slope to the boat.

There they found Evan Morgan holding the approach to the landing-place against Peter, with a lump of rock, while Philip, in the boat below, stood shouting at them to know what was the matter.

At sight of the others and their burden, however, he had no eyes for anything else.

"What have you got there, John Drillot?"

"A dead man."

"Aw, then! That's not Gard."

"It's the only man here, anyway. Pull close up, Philip--"

"Not in my boat, John Drillot!" from Peter.

"We must take this to the Senechal," said John angrily. "If you don't want to come you can wait here. If you don't make less noise, I will knock you on the head myself," and he jumped down into the boat, and took the dead man from Trevna, and laid him carefully in the bows. The others jumped in, and Peter, sooner than be knocked on the head or left behind, sulkily followed, and sat himself on the extreme edge of the stern as far away from the dead man as he could get.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

HOW JULIE MEDITATED EVIL

Nance had crouched all the morning, in the bracken above Breniere, on the knife-edge of expectancy. And behind her, at a safe distance, crouched Julie Hamon, watching Nance and L'Etat at the same time, as a cat in the shade watches a sparrow playing in the suns.h.i.+ne.

"What will be the end? What will be the end?" sighed Nance. They had all gone down out of sight, across there, and it was terrible to sit here waiting, waiting, waiting for what she feared.

If they had indeed run Gard to his hiding-place, as Philip Vaudin had said, there could be but one possible end to it; and she sat, sad-eyed and wistful, waiting for them to come up again.

It seemed as if they would never come, and she never took her eyes off the rock wall on L'Etat.

And then at last she sprang to her feet. One of them had come up again.

She could not see which. Then the others appeared, and they seemed to stand talking. Then one went off round the slope and another ran after him, and the other two went back into the rock wall.

What could they be at? She stood gazing intently.

The two came up again, and--yes--they carried something, or one of them did, and they two went off round the corner also. And presently she saw the boat coming round, and saw by its head that it was for the Creux.

She turned and sped across by the same way as yesterday, and Julie followed her at a safe distance. And it seemed to Nance, as she hurried through the familiar hedge-gaps and lanes and across the headlands, that the world had lost its brightness, and that life was desperately hard and trying.

On Derrible Head there might be a chance of seeing. She ran up to the highest point by the old cannon, just as the boat was coming in under La Conchee.

And--oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! yes--there, in the bows, lay the body of a man!--and the tears she had kept back all day broke out now in a fury of weeping. She could hardly see, but she ran on, falling at times and bruising herself, staggering to her feet again, stumbling blindly through a mist of tears.

The boat was drawn up by the time she got there, and a curious crowd surrounded it. She pushed through. She must see.

And then the weight fell off her heart, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming. For this poor thing, whatever it was, was not Stephen Gard and never had been.

She wanted to sing and dance and scream her joy aloud. They had not found him.

"What is this, John Drillot?" asked Julie, alongside her, black with anger, as she pointed to the body.

"Ma fe--a ghost, they say. John Trevna shot him, but he had been dead a long time before that, though he was alive last night, for Peter had hold of his leg as he ran."

"And where is the other--the one you went for?"