Chapter IV

Dick had listened to Nora’s footsteps up the glen with a queer heartache. There was no danger that he knew of between the glen-top and Rossiter’s cottage—none certainly of the kind he must take—but she was a girl, and there were lonely ghosts on the cliff-top, lying in wait for human company.

He put the thought away, and clambered down the glen till he gained the beach, and turned right-handed for Norland Cliff. Between his feet and the seething flood-tide there was still a strip of rock that ran only inches deep in spume. He crossed it nimbly, slipping here and there on hidden rocks, and just in time reached the great rock-stairway that wound up to Norland Point.

It was a hard climb, even in daylight, for men used to it from boyhood. The sea-worn ledges sloped upward—narrow tracks across the sheer face of the precipice—and Dick was glad that the gale blew shoreward, pressing him against the cliff.

Half-way up he thought he could do no more. His hands were raw with plucking at jagged points of rock to steady himself. His heart was beating madly, and there was a singing in his ears. He had done his best, and this was the end of it.

He looked seaward in despair, and far off he saw a ship in sore distress. The hurricane had driven the sky free of cloudy mist, and a half-grown moon shone clear on waves that reared in triumph till the wind broke them into tatters. In the midst of churning seas he watched this small ship battling with the storm. Sometimes she was riding mountains high, and then was hidden in a gulf of crested waters. But always she returned, fighting on the wave-crests for her life.

Dick, lashed by the tempest and clinging to the cliff above him, thought somehow of Ben Rossiter—of the days when he and Nora had sprawled at his cottage-door, and listened to high tales of Drake and Frobisher and Howard. But these had been small cattle to Ben when his tongue was loosed about the hardihood of Sir Richard Grenville, fighting his ship against the men of Spain. “Never a mast was left her,” Ben had chuckled, “never a mast. She was down to the bare bones of her, that ship of Grenville’s, with the seas scuppering over her. The Spaniards swore he’d done enough, and asked him to give in. ‘But no,’ says he, ‘this is an English ship.’”

Again Dick glanced seaward. The little craft, driven fast by wind and sea, was heading straight for the precipice he climbed—straight for the light on top of it. New strength came to him. There was something in remembrance of Sir Richard Grenville that gave him cheer. Out there was another English ship, and it was a race for her life, this climb of his to the cliff-top.

The race was almost ended a moment later, for he set his foot on a loose rock fallen from above. He swayed dizzily above the edge, with a sharp cry of terror. Then the hurricane drove at him and glued him to the cliff. Whatever lives the storm was taking to-night, it had saved one at least.

Just over his head the track broadened, and Dick swung up and rested there to get his wind again. He was roused by an oath that sounded overhead as the gale, too, paused for breath, and was on his feet in a moment. Keeping in shadow of the rock, he looked up, and the moonlight showed him a face so evil and distorted that his heart stood still.

Above him Jake lay flat on the cliff-top, peering down, and again an oath rapped out. “Who’s that below there?” he roared.

Then fear went from Dick. He could only think of Richard Grenville and the glee of peril. He made a hollow of his hands and shouted up that Black Garrowby was waiting for his man, and with that Jake’s head disappeared, and the gale swooped up again in earnest.

Dick glanced out to sea once more. The little ship was nearer now, still heading straight for what she thought a harbour-light. There was no time to lose, and he crept warily up the last of the climb, and pushed his head between the heather. Jake was striving moodily to and fro, stopping often to watch the ship in-driving towards the rocks.

_Above him Jake lay flat on the cliff-top._
]

The man was not two yards away, with his back turned, when Dick saw his chance, and took it. He kicked the lantern over-cliff; and then, because his errand was done, the afterfright of it was cold about him. He could not move.

Neither could Jake for a moment. Dread of the thing he was doing had pierced even his tough hide, and the cry from below had shaken him—the cry that Black Garrowby was waiting. The heaven of a wreck, with spoils to gather, was changed to Garrowby’s welcome down yonder in the deeps where drowned men lay and knew each other.

In that still moment Jake saw the dead below-seas. They were of two companies—honest sailor-men, and those who had set false lights about the cliffs—and a sick fear was at his heart. There were honest men down there—done to their deaths by such as he—and they would know him when he came among them.

For a while they stood there, both silent. Then Jake gave a scream of fury—a madman’s scream—as his glance returned to the boy who had robbed him of his prey. Dick, roused from his trance of fear, doubled back sharply. There was only one way of escape—the rock-stair he had climbed. If the upward journey had been perilous, it was harder far to go down instead of up the slippery, zigzag path; for now the whole seething waste of sea showed clear below him, and each step seemed to be his last.

He kept the track with dogged will to survive; and, after all, there was worse behind him than the seas in front. Once he paused, listening for pursuit. There was none; but, as he moved forward warily, a rock came crashing down the cliff, and another, and another.

That was Jake’s way with him, then; but by this time Dick had reached the bend where the track widened, half of it running into a narrow cave cut like a gash on the cliff’s face. He crept into the darkness, and waited, watching the moonlit half of the path. There was a dizziness in his head, a failing of strength that he mistook for want of pluck; but recollection of Ben Rossiter, and Richard Grenville, and scampers overmoor with Nora—all mixed up together—gave him courage. He had outwitted Jake so far; and the little ship, out there in the moonlight, was no longer heading straight for Norland Point. She was tacking, this way and that, uncertain and baffled now the light was gone.

Dick waited. The hurricane died down as suddenly as it had come; but the sea below ran high and boisterous, buffeting the ship. He forgot his own plight in watching her peril, till a voice bellowed from the cliff-top:

“You doused my light, Parson’s brat. Have I doused yours?”

Dick warmed to this ending of suspense. He would fight his own little ship till it was drowned down there or come to harbour.

“Ay,” he answered, making a trumpet with his hands again. “I’ve gone to join Black Garrowby.”

There came a silence from the cliff-top, and after that a storm of oaths, and then the sound of cautious feet along the track. It was hard to bear, this second waiting-time. The footsteps sounded nearer.

“Where are you, Parson’s brat?” snarled Jake. “You don’t get me twice with that trick. No ghost of Garrowby’s sort goes dousing a Wreckers’ Light. He was one of us in the old days.”

Dick could smell the man—rum, and sweat, and tar—and he passed so close that he thought himself lost. But Jake went by, looking down the track in search of the lad who’d robbed him.

Then a terrible thing happened. Jake stood stock-still in the moonlight, and a great cry rang out across the heaving seas.

“Black Garrowby,” he shrieked, and spread his hands out as if drawn by other unseen hands, and plunged into what lay below in the lockers of old Davy Jones.

Dick crouched there, bewildered by the sudden horror of it all. The sea roared and moaned below, and through its uproar he seemed to hear Jake’s death-cry echoing out and out across the tumbled waters. Then a great longing came to him to get away—up and away to the cliff-top and safety and sound of friendly voices.

He left the cave’s shelter, and began to climb the moonlit stairway. Then his strength left him. There was no spur of need to get the light away from Norland Point, no spur of fear because Jake pursued. He had done too much, and panic seized him. Strive as he would to force himself up the track, he was helpless. He could only think of the precipice above, the sheer fall below. In an agony of terror he lay flat along the path and tried to dig his finger-nails into the rock. And all about him he heard a never-ending cry of “Garrowby—Black Garrowby.”