A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 5

Old Tom marched him through the wonderful amber twilight to the summit of the bluff behind the engine-house--whence Gard could just make out his box and carpet-bag still lying on the quay below. And all the way the old man was volubly explaining the many changes necessary, in his opinion, to bring the business to a paying basis. All which information Gard accepted for testing purposes, but gathered from the total the fact that through ill health on the part of the departing captain, the ropes all round had got slack and that the tightening of them would be a matter of no little delicacy and difficulty.

Sark men, Mr. Hamon explained, were very free and independent, and hated to be driven. They did piecework--so much per fathom, and were const.i.tutionally, he admitted, a bit more particular as to the so much than as to the fathom. While the Cornish and Welsh men, receiving weekly wages, had also grown slack and did far less work than they did at first and than they might, could, and should do.

"But," said old Tom frankly, scratching his head, "I don't know's I'd like the job myself. Your men are quiet enough to look at, but they can boil over when they're put to it. And our men--well, they're Sark, and there's more'n a bit of the devil in them."

"I must get things round bit by bit," said Gard quietly. "It never pays to make a fuss and bustle men. Softly does it."

"I'm thinking you can do it if any man can."

"I'll have a good try any way."

"Whereabouts does the Seigneur live?" he asked presently, and inconsequently as it seemed, but following out a train of thought of his own which needed no guessing at.

"The Seigneur? Over there in Sark--across the Coupee."

"What's the Coupee?"

"The Coupee?--Mon Gyu!"--at such colossal ignorance--"Why, ...the Coupee's the Coupee.... Come along, then. Maybe you can get a look at it before it's too dark."

They had got quite out of sound of the clanking engine, and were travelling a well-made road, when their attention was drawn to a lively struggle proceeding on the common between the road and the cliff.

Tom, setting out after the troubled Peter, had caught sight of the Seigneur's white horse and had forthwith decided to take him home.

Peter, agreeing that it was a piece of neighbourliness which the Seigneur would appreciate, had turned back to give his a.s.sistance.

By some cajolery they had managed to slip a halter with a special length of rope over the wary white head, and there for the moment matters hung.

For the white horse, with his forelegs firmly planted, dragged at one end of the rope and the two men at the other, and the issue remained in doubt.

The doubt, however, was suddenly solved by the white horse deciding on more active measures. He swung his great head to one side, dragged the men off their feet and started off at a gallop, they hanging on as best they could.

Old Tom and Gard set off after them to see the end of the matter, and suddenly, as the roadway dipped between high banks and became a hollow way, the white beast gave a shrill squeal, flung up his heels, jerked himself free, and vanished like a streak of light into the darkness of the lofty bank in front.

"Mon Gyu!" cried old Tom, and sped up the bank to see the end.

But the white horse knew his way and had no fear. They were just in time to hear the rattle of his hoofs, as he disappeared with a final shrill defiance into the outer darkness on the further side of a mighty gulf, while a stone dislodged by his flying feet went clattering down into invisible depths.

"He's done it," panted old Tom, while Gard gazed with something like awe at the narrow pathway, wavering across from side to side of the great abyss, out of which rose the growl of the sea.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Coupee. It's a wonder he managed it. The path slipped in the winter and it's narrow in places."

"And do people cross it in the dark?" asked Gard, thinking of the girl and boy who had gone to see the Seigneur.

"Och yes! It is not bad when you're used to it. Come and see!" and he led the way back across the common to the road.

Gard walked cautiously behind him as he went across the crumbling white pathway with the carelessness of custom, and, sailor as he had been, he was not sorry when the other side was reached, and he could stand in the security of the cutting and look back, and down into the gulf where the white waves foamed and growled among the boulders three hundred feet below.

"I've seen a many as did not care to cross that, first time they saw it," said old Tom with a chuckle.

"Well, I'm not surprised at that. It's apt to make one's head spin."

"I brought captain of brig up here and he wouldn't put a foot on it. Not for five hundred pounds, he said."

"It would have taken more than five hundred pounds to piece him together if he'd tumbled down there."

"That's so."

A young moon, and a clear sky still rarely light and lofty in the amber after-glow, gave them a safe pa.s.sage back.

When they reached the house among the trees, Gard bethought him of his belongings.

"And my things from the quay?" he suggested.

"G'zammin! That boy has forgotten all about them, I'll be bound. I'll take the cart down myself."

"I'll go with you."

When they got back with the box and bag, which no one had touched since they were dropped on to the platform four hours before, they found that Nance and Bernel had got home and gone off to bed, having taken advantage of being across in Sark to call on some of their friends there.

Gard wondered how they would have fared if they had happened to be on the Coupee when the white horse went thundering across.

He dreamed that night that he was cautiously treading an endless white path that swung up and down in the darkness like a piece of ribbon in a breeze. And a great white horse came plunging at him out of the darkness, and just as he gave himself up for lost, a sweet firm face in a black sun-bonnet appeared suddenly in front of him, and the white horse squealed and leaped over them and disappeared, while the stones he had displaced went rattling down into the depths below.

CHAPTER V

HOW NANCE SHONE THROUGH HER MODEST VEILING

As soon as the old captain's time was up, Gard took up his work in the mines with energetic hopefulness.

His hopefulness was unbounded. His energy he tempered with all the tact and discretion his knowledge of men, and his experience in handling them, had taught him.

His father had been lost at sea the year after his son was born. His mother, a good and G.o.d-fearing woman, had strained every nerve to give her boy an education. She died when Stephen was fourteen. He took to his father's calling and had followed it with a certain success for ten years, by which time he had attained the position of first mate.

Then the owner of the Botallack Mine, in Cornwall, having come across him in the way of business, and been struck by his intelligence and apt.i.tude, induced him by a lucrative appointment to try his luck on land.

The managers of the Sark Mines, seeking a special man for somewhat special circ.u.mstances, had applied to Botallack for a.s.sistance, and Stephen Gard came to Sark as the representative of many hopes which, so far, had been somewhat lacking in results.

But, as old Tom Hamon had predicted, he very soon found that he had laid his hand to no easy plough.

The Sark men were characteristically difficult, and made the difficulty greater by not understanding him--or declining to understand, which came to the same thing--when he laid down his ideas and endeavoured to bring them to his ways.

Some, without doubt, had no English, and their patois was quite beyond him. Others could understand him an they would, but deliberately chose not to--partly from a conservative objection to any change whatever, and partly from an idea that he had been imported for the purpose of driving them, and driving is the last thing a Sark man will submit to.

Old Tom Hamon, and a few others who had a financial interest in the mines, a.s.sisted him all they could, in hopes of thereby a.s.sisting themselves, but they were few.