Dan put his hand over the lad"s mouth, and dragged him to the cliff head. Below was the brant steep, dark and jagged, and quivering in the deepening gloom, and the sea-birds were darting through the mid-air like bats in the dark.
"Look," said Dan, "you"ve got to swear never to tell what you have seen to-night, so help you G.o.d!"
The lad, held tightly by the breast and throat, and gripping the arms that held him with fingers that clung like claws, took one horrified glance down into the darkness. He struggled no longer. His face was very pitiful to see.
"I can not promise," he said, in a voice like a cry.
At that answer Dan drew Davy back from the cliff edge, and loosed his hold of him. He was abashed and ashamed. He felt himself a little man by the side of this half-daft fisher-lad.
All this time Ewan had stood aside looking on while Dan demanded the promise, and saying nothing. Now he went up to Davy, and said, in a quiet voice:
"Davy, if you should ever tell any one what you have seen, Dan will be a lost man all his life hereafter."
"Then let him pitch me over the cliff," said Davy, in a smothered cry.
"Listen to me, Davy," Ewan went on; "you"re a brave lad, and I know what"s in your head, but--"
"Then what for do you want to fight him?" Davy broke out. The lad"s throat was dry and husky, and his eyes were growing dim.
Ewan paused. Half his pa.s.sion was spent. Davy"s poor dense head had found him a question that he could not answer.
"Davy, if you don"t promise, you will ruin Dan--yes, it will be you who will ruin him, you, remember that. He will be a lost man, and my sister, my good sister Mona, she will be a broken-hearted woman."
Then Davy broke down utterly, and big tears filled his eyes, and ran down his cheeks.
"I promise," he sobbed.
"Good lad--now go."
Davy turned about and went away, at first running, and then dragging slowly, then running again, and then again lingering.
What followed was a very pitiful conflict of emotion. Nature, who looks down pitilessly on man and his big, little pa.s.sions, that clamor so loud but never touch her at all--even Nature played her part in this tragedy.
When Davy Fayle was gone, Dan and Ewan stood face to face as before, Dan with his back to the cliff, Ewan with his face to the sea. Then, without a word, each turned aside and picked up his militia belt.
The snowflakes had thickened during the last few moments, but now they seemed to cease and the sky to lighten. Suddenly in the west the sky was cloven as though by the sweep of a sword, and under a black bar of cloud and above a silvered water-line the sun came through very red and hazy in its setting, and with its ragged streamers around it.
Ewan was buckling the belt about his waist when the setting sun rose upon them, and all at once there came to him the Scripture that says, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." If G.o.d"s hand had appeared in the heavens, the effect on Ewan could not have been greater. Already his pa.s.sion was more than half gone, and now it melted entirely away.
"Dan," he cried, and his voice was a sob, "Dan, I can not fight--right or wrong I can not," and he flung himself down, and the tears filled his eyes.
Then Dan, whose face was afire, laughed loud and bitterly. "Coward," he said, "coward and poltroon!"
At that word all the evil pa.s.sion came back to Ewan and he leapt to his feet.
"That is enough," he said; "the belts--buckle them together."
Dan understood Ewan"s purpose. At the next breath the belt about Dan"s waist was buckled to the belt about the waist of Ewan, and the two men stood strapped together. Then they drew the daggers, and an awful struggle followed.
With breast to breast until their flesh all but touched, and with thighs entwined, they reeled and swayed, the right hand of each held up for thrust, the left for guard and parry. What Dan gained in strength Ewan made up in rage, and the fight was fierce and terrible, Dan still with his back to the cliff, Ewan still with his face to the sea.
At one instant Dan, by his great stature, had reached over Ewan"s shoulder to thrust from behind, and at the next instant Ewan had wrenched his lithe body backward and had taken the blow in his lifted arm, which forthwith spouted blood above the wrist. In that encounter they reeled about, changing places, and Ewan"s back was henceforward toward the cliff, and Dan fought with his face toward the sea.
It was a hideous and savage fight. The sun had gone down, the cleft in the heavens had closed again, once more the thin flakes of snow were falling, and the world had dropped back to its dark mood. A stormy petrel came up from the cliff and swirled above the men as they fought, and made its direful scream over them.
Up and down, to and fro, embracing closely, clutching, guarding, and meantime panting hoa.r.s.ely, and drawing hard breath, the two men fought in their deadly hate. At last they had backed and swayed to within three yards of the cliff, and then Ewan, with the gasp of a drowning man, flung his weapon into the air, and Dan ripped his dagger"s edge across the belts that bound them together, and at the next breath the belts were cut, and the two were divided, and Ewan, separated from Dan, and leaning heavily backward, was reeling, by force of his own weight, toward the cliff.
Then Dan stood as one transfixed with uplifted hand, and a deep groan came from his throat. Pa.s.sion and pain were gone from him in that awful moment, and the world itself seemed to be blotted out. When he came to himself, he was standing on the cliff head alone.
The clock in the old church was striking. How the bell echoed on that lonely height! One--two--three--four--five. Five o"clock! Everything else was silent as death. The day was gone. The snow began to fall in thick, large flakes. It fell heavily on Dan"s hot cheeks and bare neck.
His heart seemed to stand still, and the very silence itself was awful.
His terror stupefied him. "What have I done?" he asked himself. He could not think. He covered his eyes with his hands, and strode up and down the cliff head, up and down, up and down. Then in a bewildered state of semi-consciousness he looked out to sea, and there far off, a league away, he saw a black thing looming large against the darkening sky. He recognized that it was a sail, and then perceived that it was a lugger, and quite mechanically he tried to divide the mainmast and mizzen, the mainsail and yawlsail, and to note if the boat were fetching to leeward or beating down the Channel.
All at once sea and sky were blotted out, and he could not stand on his legs, but dropped to his knees, and great beads of perspiration rolled down his face and neck. He tried to call "Ewan! Ewan!" but he could not utter the least cry. His throat was parched; his tongue swelled and filled his mouth. His lips moved, but no words came from him. Then he rose to his feet, and the world flowed back upon him; the sea-fowl crying over his head, the shrillness of the wind in the snow-capped gorse, and the sea"s hoa.r.s.e voice swelling upward through the air, while its heavy, monotonous blow on the beach shook the earth beneath him. If anything else had appeared to Dan at that moment, he must have screamed with terror.
Quaking in every limb, he picked up his clothes and turned back toward the sh.o.r.e. He was so feeble that he could scarcely walk through the snow that now lay thick on the short gra.s.s. When he reached the mouth of the gully he did not turn into the shed, but went on over the pebbles of the creek. His bloodshot eyes, which almost started from their sockets, glanced eagerly from side to side. At last he saw the thing he sought, and now that it was under him, within reach of his hand, he dare hardly look upon it.
At the foot of a jagged crag that hung heavily over from the cliff the body of Ewan Mylrea lay dead and cold. There was no mark of violence upon it save a gash on the wrist of the left hand, and over the wound there was a clot of blood. The white face lay deep in the breast, as if the neck had been dislocated. There were no other outward marks of injury from the fall. The body was outstretched on its back, with one arm--the left arm--lying half over the forehead, and the other, the right arm, with the hand open and the listless fingers apart, thrown loosely aside.
Dan knelt beside the body, and his heart was benumbed like ice. He tried to pray, but no prayer would come, and he could not weep.
"Ewan! Ewan!" he cried at length, and his voice of agony rolled round the corpse like the soughing of the wind.
"Ewan! Ewan!" he cried again; but only the sea"s voice broke the silence that followed. Then his head fell on the cold breast, and his arms covered the lifeless body, and he cried upon G.o.d to have mercy on him, and to lift up His hand against him and cut him off.
Presently he got on his feet, and scarcely knowing what he was doing, he lifted the body in his arms, with the head lying backward on his shoulder, and the white face looking up in its stony stare to the darkening heavens. As he did so his eyes were raised to the cliff, and there, clearly outlined over the black crags and against the somewhat lighter sky, he saw the figure of a man.
He toiled along toward the shed. He was so weak that he could scarce keep on his legs, and when he reached the little place at the mouth of the creek he was more dead than alive. He put the body to lie on the bed of straw on which he had himself slept and dreamed an hour before. Then all at once he felt a low sort of cunning coming over him, and he went back to the door and shut it, and drew the long wooden bolt into its iron hoop on the jamb.
He had hardly done so when he heard an impatient footstep on the shingle outside. In another instant the latch was lifted and the door pushed heavily. Then there was a knock. Dan made no answer, but stood very still and held his breath. There was another knock, and another. Then, in a low tremulous murmur there came the words:
"Where is he? G.o.d A"mighty! where is he?" It was Davy Fayle. Another knock, louder, and still no reply.
"Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan, they"re coming; Mastha Dan, G.o.d A"mighty!--"
Davy was now tramping restlessly to and fro. Dan was trying to consider what it was best to do, whether to open to Davy and hear what he had to say, or to carry it off as if he were not within, when another foot sounded on the shingle and cut short his meditations.
"Have you seen Mr. Ewan--Parson Ewan?"
Dan recognized the voice. It was the voice of Jarvis Kerruish.
Davy did not answer immediately.
"Have you seen him, eh?"
"No, sir," Davy faltered.
"Then why didn"t you say so at once? It is very strange. The people said he was walking toward the creek. There"s no way out in this direction, is there?"