A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 14

"On the slack it's not so bad, and at half ebb."

"And what is there to see when you get there?"

"Oh, just rocks, and puffins and gulls. You can hardly walk without stepping on them. Do you remember how we sat and watched the baby gulls coming out, Nance?"

"Yes," nodded Nance. "And you nearly got your fingers bitten off by a puffin when you felt in its hole."

"Ma de, yes! They do bite."

"What do you call the rock?" asked Gard, nodding across at it.

"L'Etat," said Nance. "Mr. Cachemaille once told me that it had most likely at one time been joined on to Little Sark by a Coupee, just the same as Little Sark is joined to Sark. That's the Coupee, that shelf under water where the tide runs so fast. Some day, he said, perhaps our Coupee will go and we'll be an island just as L'Etat is."

"It won't be this week," said Bernel philosophically.

"It looks like the top of a high mountain just sticking up out of the water," said Gard, fascinated by the ceaseless rush of those monstrous waves in an otherwise calm sea.

"I suppose that is what it is," said Nance. "It's far worse at the other end. You can't see it from here. No matter how smooth the sea is it seems to tumble down over some cliff under water and then come shooting up again, and it throws itself at the rocks and sends the spray up into the sky."

"I'd like to go and see it," said Gard. "But I don't think I would like to swim. Could one get a boat?"

"We have a boat with Nick Mollet in the bay below here," said Bernel.

"But he's generally out fis.h.i.+ng and you're always busy."

"I'll take a holiday some day and you shall take me over."

Time came when they went, but it was hardly a holiday undertaking.

CHAPTER XII

HOW NANCE CAME UP THE MAIN SHAFT WITHOUT GOING DOWN IT

It was a few days after this that Gard had another proof of Nance's and Bernel's fearlessness and prowess in the waters they had conquered into friendliness.

Bernel was a great fisherman. He could wheedle out rock-fish by the dozen while envious miners sat about him tugging hopefully at empty lines.

He had gone down one afternoon to the overhanging wooden slip at Port Gorey, and had excellent sport, until a sudden s.h.i.+ft of the wind to the south-west began piling the waters into the gulf on an incoming tide.

Then he drew in his lines and sat dangling his legs for a few minutes, before gathering up his catch and going home.

Nance saw him from the other headland and came tripping round to see how he had fared.

"Bern," she cried, as she came up. "Tell that man he's not safe down there. The waves are bad there sometimes."

"Hi, you!" cried Bernel, to a miner who had been watching his success and had then climbed down seaward over the furrowed black ledges, hoping to do better there. "Come back! It's not safe there."

But the fisherman, intent on his sport, either did not, or would not, hear him.

"Oh, well, if you won't," said Bernel.

And then, without warning, a wave greater than any that had gone before it, hurled itself up the rocks and came roaring over the black ledges into the bay, and the man was gone.

Nance and Bernel had straightened up instantly at the sound of its coming.

Their eyes swept the rocks, and caught a glimpse of the dark body tumbling with the cascade of foam into Port Gorey.

"Oh, Bern!" cried Nance, with up-clasped hands.

But Bernel, loosing his belt and kicking off his breeches with a glance at the derelict, launched himself clear of the pier with a shout. And Nance, seeing the bulk of the man, and careless of everything but Bernel who seemed so very small compared with him, threw off her sun-bonnet and linen jacket, loosed a b.u.t.ton, and was gone like a white flash after the two of them.

Gard was in the a.s.say office not far away. He heard the shout and ran out just in time to see Nance go, and running to the slip he saw their clothes lying and the meaning of it all.

Bern had hold of the miner by the collar of his coat, and was doing his best with one hand to tow him to the s.h.i.+ngle at the head of the gulf, the almost drowned one splas.h.i.+ng wildly and doing his utmost to get hold of and drown his rescuer. Every now and again Bernel found it necessary to let go in order to keep out of his way.

Nance swam steadily up and the sinking one made a frantic clutch at her.

"Lie quiet or you shall drown," she cried. "Do you hear? Lie quiet and you are safe! See!" and she held his right hand while Bernel took his left and the man found himself no longer sinking, and they struck out for the s.h.i.+ngle.

Others of the miners had run down with ropes, but ropes were useless in that deep gulf. Nance and Bernel were doing the only thing possible, and Gard saw that they were all right now that the man had ceased to struggle.

He picked up Bernel's things, and Nance's, with a curious feeling of delight and a touch of shyness, her sun-bonnet, her little linen jacket, her woollen skirt, her neat little wooden sabots, and ran swiftly with them to the shaft at the head of the gulf.

They would make for the adit, he thought, and so gain the shaft and come up by the ladders, if, indeed, John Thomas was in any state to climb ladders.

"Bring some brandy," he shouted to one of the men, and ran on. Nance was more to him than all the miners in Sark, and it was not brandy she would be wanting, he knew, but her clothes.

And, since a man needs both his hands to go down almost perpendicular ladders, he left at the top all that she would not instantly need and took only the little jacket and the woollen skirt. These he rolled into a bundle as he ran, and gripped in his teeth as he began the descent, and rejoiced all the way down in this close intimacy with her clothing.

Indeed, on one of the stages, when he stopped for a moment's breathing, he kissed the little garments devoutly, and then laughed shamefacedly at himself for his foolishness, and glanced round quickly lest any should have witnessed it.

So down, down, till he came to the level, and crept along the adit to the sh.o.r.e.

They had dragged John Thomas up on to the s.h.i.+ngle, and he lay there half-dead and fuller of water than was his custom.

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 fas.h.i.+on.

"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.

"He'll be all right after a bit," he added. "I told them to send down some brandy," at which John Thomas groaned heavily to show his extremity. "As soon as it comes, Bernel, you help Nance up the ladders.

Then run home both of you. Your things are at the top, Bernel. And here comes the brandy. Now, up you go! Do you think you can manage the ladders?" he asked Nance.

"I'll manage them," and they crept away into the darkness of the adit, and Nance thought she had never been in such a hideous place in her life.