In the Roar of the Sea Part 17

"Jamie! I can see that same s.h.i.+p from here."

But her brother could not hear her. He was throwing stones for the dog to run after, and meet a wave as it rushed in.

The tide was going out: it had marked its highest elevation by a bow of foam and strips of dark seaweed and broken sh.e.l.ls. Judith stepped along this line, and picked out the largest ribbon of weed she could find. She would hang it in her bedroom to tell her the weather. The piece that had been wont to act as barometer was old, and, besides, it had been lost in the recent s.h.i.+ft and confusion.

Jamie came up to her.

"Now, Ju, mind and watch me, or you will lose me altogether."

Then he ran forward, with Tib dancing and yelping round him. Presently he scrambled up a shelf of rock inclined from the sea, and up after him, yelping, scrambled Tib. In a moment both disappeared over the crest.

Judith went up to the ridge and called to her brother.

"I cannot climb this, Jamie."

But in another moment, a hundred yards to her right, round the extremity of the reef, came Tib and his master, the boy dancing and laughing, the dog ducking his head, shaking his ears, and, all but laughing also, evidently enjoying the fun as much as Jamie.

"This way, Ju!" shouted the boy, and signed to his sister. She could not hear his voice, but obeyed his gestures. The reef ran athwart the top of the bay, like the dorsal, jagged ridge of a crocodile half buried in the sand.

Judith drew her skirts higher and closer, as the sand was wet, and there were pools by the rock. Then, holding her ribbon of seaweed by the harsh, knotted root, torn up along with the leaf, and trailing it behind her, she followed her brother, reached the end of the rock, turned and went in the traces of Jamie and Tib in the sand parallel to her former course.

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, on the right hand there opened before her, in the face of the cliff, a cave, the entrance to which was completely masked by the ridge she had turned. Into this cave went Jamie with his dog.

"I am not obliged to follow you there!" protested Judith; but he made such vehement signs to her to follow him that she good-humoredly obeyed.

The cave ran in a long way, at first at no great incline, then it became low overhead, and immediately after the floor inclined rapidly upward, and the vault took a like direction. Moreover, light appeared in front. Here, to Judith's surprise, she saw a large boat, painted gray, furnished with oars and boat-hook. She was attached by a chain to a staple in the rock. Judith examined her with a little uneasiness.

No name was on her.

The sides of the cave at this point formed shelves, not altogether natural, and that these were made use of was evident, because on them lay staves of broken casks, a four-f.l.a.n.g.ed boat-anchor, and some oars.

Out of the main trunk cave branched another that was quite dark, and smaller; in this, Judith, whose eyes were becoming accustomed to the twilight, thought she saw the bows of a smaller boat, also painted gray.

"Jamie!" said Judith, now in serious alarm; "we ought not to be here.

It is not safe. Do--do come away at once."

"Why, what is there to harm us?"

"My dear, do come away." She turned to retrace her steps, but Jamie stopped her.

"Not that way, Ju! I have another by which to get out. Follow me still."

He led the way up the steep rubble slope, and the light fell fuller from above. The cave was one of those into which when the sea rolls and chokes the entrance, the compressed air is driven out by a second orifice.

They reached a sort of well or shaft, at the bottom of which they stood, but it did not open vertically but bent over somewhat, so that from below the sky could not be seen, though the light entered. A narrow path was traced in the side, and up this Jamie and the dog scrambled, followed by Judith, who was most anxious to escape from a place which she had no doubt was one of the shelter caves of the smugglers--perhaps of Cruel Coppinger, whose house was not a mile distant.

The ascent was steep, the path slippery in places, and therefore dangerous. Jamie made nothing of it, nor did the little dog, but Judith picked her way with care; she had a good steady head, and did not feel giddy, but she was not sure that her feet might not slide in the clay where wet with water that dripped from the sides. As she neared the entrance she saw that hartstongue and maidenhair fern had rooted themselves in the sheltered nooks of this tunnel.

After a climb of a hundred feet she came out on a ledge in the face of the cliff above the bay, to see, with a gasp of dismay, her brother in the hand of Cruel Coppinger, the boy paralyzed with fear so that he could neither stir nor cry out.

"What!" exclaimed the Captain, "you here?" as he saw Judith stand before him.

The puppy was barking and snapping at his boots. Coppinger let go Jamie, stooped and caught the dog by the neck. "Look at me," said the smuggler sternly, addressing the frightened boy. Then he swung the dog above his head and dashed it down the cliffs; it caught, then rolled, and fell out of sight--certainly with the life beaten out of it.

"This will be done to you," said he; "I do not say that I would do it.

She"--he waved his hand toward Judith--"stands between us. But if any of the fifteen to twenty men who know this place and come here should chance to meet you as I have met you, he would treat you without compunction as I have treated that dog. And if he were to catch you below--you have heard of Wyvill, the Preventive man?--you would fare as did he. Thank your sister that you are alive now. Go on--that way--up the cliff." He pointed with a telescope he held.

Jamie fled up the steep path like the wind.

"Judith," said Coppinger, "will you stand surety that he does not tell tales?"

"I do not believe he will say anything."

"I do not ask you to be silent. I know you will not speak. But if you mistrust his power to hold his tongue, send him away--send him out of the country--as you love him."

"He shall never come here again," said Judith, earnestly.

"That is well; he owes his life to you."

Judith noticed that Cruel Coppinger's left arm was no more in a sling, nor in bands.

He saw that she observed this, and smiled grimly. "I have my freedom with this arm once more--for the first time to-day."

CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE DUSK.

"Kicking along, Mr. Menaida, old man?" asked Mr. Scantlebray, in his loud, harsh voice, as he shook himself inside the door of Uncle Zachie's workshop. "And the little 'uns? Late in life to become nurse and keep the bottle and pap-bowl going, eh, old man? How's the orphings? Eating their own weight of victuals at twopence-ha'penny a head, eh? My experience of orphings isn't such as would make a man hilarious, and feel that he was filling his pockets."

"Sit you down, sir; you'll find a chair. Not that one, there's a dab of a.r.s.enical paste got on to that. Sit you down, sir, over against me.

Glad to see you and have some one to talk to. Here am I slaving all day, worn to fiddlestrings. There's Squire Rashleigh, of Menabilly, must have a glaucous gull stuffed at once that he has shot; and there's Sir John St. Aubyn, of Clowance, must have a case of kittiwakes by a certain day; and an inst.i.tution in London wants a genuine specimen of a Cornish chough. Do they think I'm a tradesman to be ordered about? That I've not an income of my own, and that I am dependent on my customers? I'll do no more. I'll smoke and play the piano. I've no time to exchange a word with any one. Come, sit down.

What's the news?"

"It's a bad world," said Mr. Scantlebray, setting himself into a chair. "That's to say, the world is well enough if it warn't for there being too many rascals in it. I consider it's a duty on all right-thinking men to clear them off."

"Well, the world would be better if we had the making of it,"

acquiesced Mr. Menaida. "Bless you! I've no time for anything. I like to do a bit of bird-stuffing just as a sort of relaxation after smoking, but to be forced to work more than one cares--I won't do it!

Besides, it is not wholesome. I shall be poisoned with a.r.s.enic. I must have some antidote. So will you, sir--eh? A drop of real first-rate cognac?"

"Thank you, sir--old man--I don't mind dipping a feather and drawing it across my lips."

Jamie had been so frightened by the encounter with Cruel Coppinger that he was thoroughly upset. He was a timid, nervous child, and Judith had persuaded him to go to bed. She sat by him, holding his hand, comforting him as best she might, when he sobbed over the loss of his pup, and cheering him when he clung to her in terror at the reminiscence of the threats of the Captain to deal with him as he had with Tib. Judith was under no apprehension of his revisiting the cave; he had been too thoroughly frightened ever to venture there again. She said nothing to impress this on him; all her efforts were directed toward allaying his alarms.

Just as she hoped that he was dropping off into unconsciousness, he suddenly opened his eyes, and said, "Ju."

"Yes, dear."