"Wait?--why--until when?"
"Danny, from the head of the Lockjaw you can see the light on the end of the pier. I"ve been there myself and know you can. Keep your eye fixed on that light."
"Yes, yes; well, well?"
"The moment you see the light go down on the pier--no matter when--no matter what else has happened--do you that instant set fire to the gorse about you. Fire it here, there, everywhere, as if it were the night of May-day."
"Yes; what then?"
"Then creep down to the sh.o.r.e and wait again."
"What will happen, Mona?"
"This--Kisseck and the men with him will see your light over the Lockjaw, and guess that it is a signal of danger. If they have half wit they"ll know that it must be meant for them. Then they"ll jump into their boat and pull down to you."
"When they come, what am I to say?"
"Say that the police from Castle Rushen are after them; that four are cut off in the castle, and four more are on the Horse Hill above Contrary. Tell them to get back, every man of them, to Kisseck"s house as fast as their legs will carry them."
Danny"s intelligence might be sluggish at ordinary moments, but to-night it was suddenly charged with a ready man"s swiftness and insight. "But the Castle Rushen men on the Horse Hill will see the burning gorse," he said.
"True--ah, yes, Danny, that"s tr--. I have it! I have it!" exclaimed the girl. "There are two paths from the Lockjaw to Kisseck"s house. I walked both of them with Ruby, yesterday. One goes above the open shaft of the old lead mine, the other below it. Tell the men to take the low road--the _low_ road; be _sure_ you say the low road--and if the police see your fire I"ll send them along the high road, and so they will pa.s.s with a cliff between them. That"s it, thank G.o.d. You understand me, Danny? Are you quite sure you understand everything--every little thing?"
"Yes, I do," said the lad, with the energy of a man.
"When they get to Kisseck"s cottage let them smoke, drink, gamble, swear--anything--to make believe they have never been out to-night. You know what I mean?"
"I do," repeated the lad.
He was a new being. His former self seemed in that hour to drop from him like a garment.
Mona looked at him in the dim light shot through the window from the fire, and for an instant her heart smote her. What was she doing with this lad? What was he doing for her? Love was her pole-star. What was his? Only the blank self-abandonment of despair. For love of Christian she was risking all this. But the wild force that inspired the heart of this simple lad was love for her who loved another. Whose was the n.o.bler part, hers who hoped all, or his who hoped nothing? In the darkness she felt her face flush deep. Oh, what a great little heart was here--here, in this outcast boy; this neglected, down-trodden, despised, and rejected, poor, pitiful waif of humanity.
"Danny," she murmured, with plaintive tenderness, "it is wrong of me to ask you to do this for me--very, very wrong."
His eyes were dilated. The face, hitherto unutterably mournful to see, was alive with a strange fire. But he said nothing. He turned his head toward the lonely sea, whose low moan came up through the dark night.
She caught both his hands with a pa.s.sionate grasp. "Danny," she murmured again, "if there was another name for love that is not--"
She stopped, but her eyes were close to his.
He turned. "Don"t look like that," he cried, in a voice that went to the girl"s heart like an arrow.
She dropped his hands. She trembled and glowed. "Oh, my own heart will break," she said; "to love and not be loved, to be loved and not to love--"
["I think at whiles I"d like to die in a big sea like that."]
Mona started. What had recalled Danny"s strange words? Had he spoken them afresh? No.
"Danny," she murmured once more, in tones of endearment, and again she grasped his hands. Their eyes met. The longing, yearning look in hers answered to the wild glare in his.
"Don"t look at me like that," he repeated, with the same low moan.
Mona felt as if that were the last she was ever to see of the lad in this weary world. He loved her with all his great, broken, bleeding heart. Her lips quivered. Then the brave, fearless, stainless girl put her quivering lips to his.
To Danny that touch was as fire. With a pa.s.sionate cry he flung his arms about her. For an instant her head lay on his breast. "Now go," she whispered, and broke from his embrace.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
Danny tore himself away with heart and brain aflame. Were they to meet again? Yes. For one terrible and perilous moment they were yet to stand face to face. As he ran down the road toward the town, Danny encountered a gang of men with lanterns, whooping, laughing, singing carols, and beating the bushes. It was the night before Christmas-eve, and they were "hunting the wren." Tommy Tear and Davy Cain were among them. Danny heard their loud voices, and knew they had trapped the harbor-master.
The first act in to-night"s tragedy had begun.
Two hours and a half later Mona pa.s.sed the same troop of men. They were now standing in the Market-place. Tommy Tear and Davy Cain had a long pole from shoulder to shoulder, and from this huge bracket a tiny bird--a wren--was suspended. It was one of their Christmas customs.
Their companions came up at intervals and plucked a feather from the wren"s breast. Tommy-Bill-beg was singing a carol. A boy held a lantern to a crumpled paper, from which the unlettered c.o.xcomb pretended to sing.
Mona hurried on. Her immediate destination was the net factory. There she found the company of nine or ten men. She was taken into the midst of them. "This is the young woman," shouted Kerruish Kinvig; "and when some of you fellows," he added, "have been police for fifty years, and are grown gray in the service, you may do worse than come here and go to school to this girl of two-and-twenty."
There was some superior and depreciatory laughter, and then Mona was required to repeat what she knew. When she had done so she did not wait for official instructions. She quietly and resolutely announced her intention of going on to the cliff-head above Contrary with a lantern in hand. When the light on the pier was run down by the fishing-boat, she would light her lantern and turn it toward the castle as a sign to the men in hiding there. The determination and decision of this girl brooked no question. The police agreed to her scheme. And had she not been the root and origin of all their movements, and the sole cause that they were there at all?
But Mona had yet another proposal, and to herself this last was the most vital of all. The four men who were to watch Bill Kisseck"s house must have a guide, or by their lumbering movements they would awaken suspicion, and the birds would be frightened and not snared. Christian had not been found. "He"s off to Ramsey, no doubt," suggested Kinvig.
"I"ll be guide to you myself," said Mona. "I"ll take you to the Head, place you there, and then go off to my own station." And so it was agreed. It is not usually a man"s shrewdness that can match a woman"s wit at an emergency like this. And then the men in this case were police--a palliating circ.u.mstance!
Half an hour pa.s.sed, and Mona was on the cliff-head. She had so placed the four men that they could not see her own position or know whether she duly and promptly lit her lantern or not. The night was still very dark. Not a star was shining; no moon appeared. Yet, standing where she stood, with the black hill behind her, she could at least descry something of the sea in front. The water, lighter than the land, showed faintly below. Mona could trace the line of white breakers around the Castle Isle. If a boat"s sail came close to the coast, she could see that also. The darkness of the night might aid her. There was light enough for her movements, but too little for the movements of the four strangers behind her.
Mona saw the boat leave the sh.o.r.e that carried Kinvig and his four a.s.sistants across the strait to the castle. In a moment she lost it in the black shadow. Then she heard the grating of its keel on the shingle, and the clank of the little chain that moored it.
Now everything depended on Danny. Had the lad wit enough to comprehend all her meaning? Even if so, was it in human nature to do so much as she expected him to do from no motive, but such as sprang from hopeless love? G.o.d brighten the lad"s dense intellect for this night at least!
Heaven enn.o.ble our poor, selfish, uncertain human nature for one brief hour!
Mona strained her ear for the splash of an oar. Danny ought to be stirring now. But no; Mona could hear nothing but the murmur of the waters on the pebbles and their distant boom in the bay.
Look! coming up to the west coast of the castle were the sails of a fishing-boat silhouetted against the leaden sky. It was a lugger. Mona could see both mainmast and mizzen with mainsail and yawl. It was the "Ben-my-Chree." Christian was there, and he was in deadly peril. She herself had endangered his liberty and life. The girl was almost beside herself with terror.
But look again! Though no sound of oars could reach her, she could now see the clear outline of a boat scudding through the lighter patch of water just inside the castle"s shadow. It was Danny! G.o.d bless and keep him on earth and in heaven! How the lad rowed! Light as the dip of a feather, and swift as the eagle flies! Bravely, Danny, bravely!
The clock in the tower of the old church in the Market-place was striking. How the bell echoed on this lonely height!--six, seven, eight, nine! Nine o"clock? Then the merchantman ought to be near at hand. Mona strained her eyes into the darkness. She could see nothing. Perhaps the ship would not come. Perhaps Heaven itself had ordered that the man she loved should be guiltless of this crime. Merciful Heaven, let it be so!
let it be so!
The fishing-boat had disappeared. Yes, her sails were gone. But out at sea, far out, half a league away--what black thing was there? Oh, it must be a cloud; that was all. No doubt a storm was brewing. What was the funny sailor"s saying that Ruby laughed at when Danny repeated it?