Chapter IX: The Weary Sands

But the morning, rising cold and bright, though still misty, found me on the rebound once more. The day, after all, is what we make it, and I _would_ not think evil of so smiling a one. Mr. Sant was back, even if we could not see him yet, and his mere neighbourhood was a splint to a weak-knee’d conscience.

Uncle Jenico, though still oppressed with some odd premonition, some formless concern about me, permitted himself to be reassured so far by my high spirits as to let me go presently, with nothing more than an earnest entreaty that I would take care of myself. I had told him nothing about our proposed trip to the Weary Sands. It would have served no purpose but to trouble him all day with anxiety as to our return. I was glad to think, later, that I had not done so; that I had sat content with him for an hour or two after breakfast; had kept him chatting genially, and made him laugh; had taken a genuine bright interest in the “Colossal Wrench,” an invention (which he was engaged in perfecting at the time) somewhat on the principle of the Spanish garrotte, for applying tremendous haulage to an object--the most gratifyingly practical of all his inspirations, as you shall see. And I was glad to think that when at last I had left him, well on in the morning, in a sudden access of emotion he had kissed me, and then driven me away with his stick, and a laugh, and the tears in his eyes. I had been half shamefaced, it is true, at the moment; but presently was to sentimentalize more over the memory than he had over the fact.

We were engaged, Harry and I, by arrangement for this day to the convoying of Mr. Pilbrow about the place, in order to his making acquaintance with its objects of interest. It was nothing, in fact, but an excuse for a ramble; only, to give it a holiday complexion, we had arranged to bring our lunch with us, and our visitor back to high tea at the end of the jaunt.

I set forth about eleven o’clock for the Flask, where we were to meet. The shadows of the previous night were dispelled. A still, shining mist half hid and half revealed, like a bridal veil, the pretty face of nature. There was a smile and a sparkle of gems through it all, and I whistled, as happy as a blackbird, as I went. It was within three mornings of Christmas, a time of peace and good-will, and I was determined to let the day be sufficient for itself in evil without troubling to force its hand.

On the wall of the inn I found a wonderful notice posted. It was written crooked, in great black letters and without any stops, and ran as follows:--

“Nekt Thrusday 26t Desrember there will be on Plaistoo Jingling matches for Hats grinning thro coler Catching of a pig with the Tail greazed climing of a pole of wemen Running For Snuff old Men for tobakker there will be also a place receved for dancing and seats Will be also receved for the Leadies there will be a band including marrow bons and clever to conclude with a grand Exbitrition of Fire wax and Cullerd bumps by J.F.”

Harry joined me while I was spluttering over this, and read the exciting legend across my shoulder.

“I say,” he said, “Mr. Pilbrow’s in luck. He’ll think we’re a game lot. I only hope the reaction won’t be too severe. But what does ‘bumps’ mean? Is Sant getting up a sparring match?”

“Bombs, you gaby,” I said, sniggering.

“Mighty!” said he. “Old Fleming’s going it. But won’t it be fun!”

Then he fell to a little gravity.

“By the way,” he said, “Sant hasn’t come home yet, and they don’t expect him at the rectory till this afternoon.”

It was the first little damper on my serenity.

“O, well!” I said, with a sigh; “we shall be out for the day anyhow; and it don’t make much difference if we can only get hold of him this evening. You saw Rampick last night?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Bother Rampick for this day at least!”

We ran up in good spirits to Joshua, and in a little while were launched upon our explorations. Our odd dry old companion was quite excited, too, in his way. It was the most novel, most wonderful experience to him, I think, thus to chaperon a couple of lively lads, and be their favoured charge and mentor in one. He kept himself acrid and reserved--it was the habit of his life; but a certain glistening in his pale eyes, a spot of colour that established itself in his lean cheek, spoke of some spark reawakening in those long-chilled ashes of his soul underneath. There was even some glow of self-marvelling enthusiasm in that haunting gaze of his, of which I found myself from time to time the cynosure. It was like the glare of a remorseful ghost coveting recognition in heaven’s nursery by its own child’s happy spirit. “What human sympathy have I foregone and realized too late!” it seemed to express.

We betook ourselves in the first place--by Joshua’s rather insistent wish, but, secretly, against our own--to the ruins, and for an hour poked about among them wearily, loitering after our guest, and supplying, scarcely volunteering, all that of their history with which we were acquainted--impersonally, that is to say. The truth is, the place had become odious to us--as full of sordid significances as is a house in which a murder has been committed, when we know ourselves subpoena’d to give evidence on the crime. But naturally our companion felt none of this, and was only absorbed and interested, so far as appeared, in the archaeological testimony. Once, at the end, he paused, as fatality would have it, close by the plinth and the encumbered thicket. I glanced at Harry. _A second time, patiently and scrupulously, had the hole been stopped, and the traces of our visit effaced._

What did the man mean? Did he, in his diseased imagination, think thus to convince us in the face of our actual experience? It was like enough. His unnerving dreams are so real to the drunkard, he cannot but think that others must see what he sees and be blind to what he has successfully hidden from himself. He is like the ostrich in his amazing digestion of both facts and fables, Whether he puts fire in his stomach or his head in the sand, he is equally the confident and incurable dupe of his own imagination.

Suddenly Joshua, after a prolonged reverie, half turned to us.

“Are there any legends of crypts, underground vaults, anything that we have not seen about here?” he demanded.

I was startled; I could not order my thoughts. I mumbled out involuntarily--

“I--there used to be a talk of smugglers.”

He turned upon me like a snapping dog.

“Smugglers! What about them?”

Harry glanced at me warningly.

“O!” I said, recovering myself with a flush, “it was an old tale when we came, Mr. Pilbrow; and, since, the weather and the coastguard have been knocking it to pieces between them.”

He stood thoughtfully rubbing his chin.

“So?” he murmured. “Knocking what to pieces?”

“Why, the tale,” said I; for I did not wish to be more particular.

I don’t know if he understood my reluctance. He did not persist in his questions, anyhow, but lapsed into a brown study. He seemed to have forgotten our presence.

“So it ever vanishes,” he muttered, with a stark and melancholy frown. “From Dungeness to Spurn Head it is always the same. The past breaks away and falls into the sea as I approach. The ghosts lead, the mirage beckons me; and, behold! the precipice and the boom of waters where I had thought a treasure house!”

He gave a sigh that was nothing less than heart-rending. A certain awe and discomfort kept us mute. Here was some tragedy beyond our guessing, but to which we were guiltily conscious that our secretiveness contributed. Then in a moment he turned upon us with a laugh in which there was not even a tinge of mirth.

“If there is any land too much in the world,” said he, “put me to walk upon its shore, and it will vanish before me yard by yard. My breath is blasting powder; my feet are earthquakes. I must drown if I live long enough.”

He walked off towards the cliff, and paused at its edge, looking down gloomily on the leaning shaft of the well.

“He is thinking of Abel and his book,” I whispered to Harry as we followed.

Suddenly he turned to me, and put his arm through mine with an air emotional and apologetic.

“Dear lad,” he said, “you mustn’t consider my moods. I talk to myself, Richard--the bad habit of a lonely man. What is that thing, now? I have wondered before this.”

I told him.

“Ah!” he said, with a bleak jocosity: “let well be. It should have confronted me six years ago; and I see it only now, the moral of all my wanderings. Yet in a good hour is it spoken, Richard, since chance has brought me to your company again. Or is it destiny, which leading me to neglect this scrap of shore hitherto, points its lesson at the end with the broken shaft yonder? Let well be. I am hungry.”

So we sat down then and there and got out our provisions. They put astonishing comfort into us, and we two boys, at least, grew hilarious. Sound-livered and hardened, we took no thought of chill; and indeed the weather for the time of year was balm. A light glistening fog still slept over everything; there was no breath of wind, and the whisper of the surf came up to us drowsily.

“Now, this wreck,” said Joshua presently: “where will it be?”

Harry jumped to his feet.

“Mighty!” he exclaimed. “We must be thinking of moving if we want to pull out to it. Tide’s at ebb, Dicky, and near the turn. Thereabouts it lies, Mr. Pilbrow, on the Weary Sands; but we can’t just make it out in this haze.”

“Well, for the boat,” I said, scrambling up; and we all made for the Gap together. It was then half an hour past midday.

“A bad time,” said I. “What fools we were not to think of it before! There won’t be a soul about.”

There was one soul, however, it appeared--a gaunt solitary figure, which, as we neared the head of the sandy slope, we could see silhouetted against the sky--a figure, too, which, from its restless craning attitude, one might have thought was expecting us.

Harry edged up to me, and was on the point of whispering, when he caught Joshua’s eyes fixed upon him. He giggled, and looked silly.

“I was thinking, sir,” began he, “that that man there----” and then he stopped.

“Well, what about him?” said the other.

“Why,” said Harry, so confused as to forget himself--“if--if you want to know about smugglers, he’s the chap to tell you, that’s all.”

I nudged my friend.

“Well,” he muttered peevishly; “I’ve not said anything, have I? Rampick can look after himself.”

Joshua did not answer, and we went on--and in the same moment Rampick was gone.

But we saw him again when we came into view of the beach. He was down by the water, ostentatious with a boat, which lay stern on to the surf--the only man and the only craft handy in all the waste prospect.

Joshua stopped in admiration.

“A providence, it seems to me!” said he.

“We can’t go with _him_!” I muttered.

Our visitor looked at me in wonder.

“Why not?” he said.

How could I answer? That this seeming opportuneness was nothing more, as I was convinced, than a deliberate self-appropriation by this man of a scheme which he had overheard us discussing in the hall last night? And what then, save a confession on his part of a good trading instinct? I must find something better than that.

“He’s a drunkard,” I said, flushing. “He isn’t to be trusted, in my opinion.”

“Why?” said Joshua. “Isn’t it his own boat?”

“O yes!” I answered; for it was, indeed--the single sound piece of goods which Rampick had saved and clung to out of the wreck of his past.

“Isn’t it big enough?” insisted the visitor.

“Quite big enough.”

“Why,” said Joshua, “a seaman never loses his legs but ashore. And we are three to one, gentlemen. I’m small; but I’ll back myself for a rat to grip. If it’s me you’re thinking of----”

Harry hung his head. I was ashamed to say more. It did seem ridiculous that three vigorous bodies should be timorous of this one crazy oaf. The half-truth made us out cravens, and the whole was impossible. Nevertheless, the prospect of such a boatman for the trip quite took off the edge of its pleasure. We followed Joshua hangdog, as he strode down the Gap and across the beach.

“You’ve whetted my curiosity,” he said over his shoulder. “A drunken smuggler should be good company.”

I scowled at Harry, dropping behind.

“Well, why didn’t you take upon yourself to answer him?” he muttered viciously. “We’re in for a nice thing, it seems, knowing what we know. It’ll be pleasant to have to hob-nob with the fellow, and a warrant for his hanging like in our pockets!”

“He’s brought it on himself,” I answered. “He heard us last night; and I’ll swear he’s been ready and waiting for us all the morning.”

“Well, look out for squalls, that’s all I can say,” said my friend; and, as he spoke, we reached the boat.

Rampick, busy over it, never even looked up as we came. But I could see his great hands trembling on the thwarts, as he leaned down.

“We want to pull out to the wreck, Mr. Rampick,” I faltered. “Can you let us have your boat?”

I essayed to exclude him, as a last resource. He did not raise his head, but answered in a heavy shaking voice from where he bent.

“Which it’s well known _to_ you, sir, that my boat and me don’t part company.”

“It’s a special occasion, Mr. Rampick.”

He came up, with a sudden heaving together of all his bulk, and subsiding rigidly backwards against the gunwale, stood breathing softly, and staring with intense unblinking eyes, _not at us, but at our companion_.

So a cat stares at bay, crouching before a watchful snuffing dog. I don’t think he ever once looked at Harry or me. From that moment he seemed to focus all the panic of his haunted soul on the stranger who had come in our train. It was inexplicable, though in its way a relief to us for the time being--the sort of relief one feels when some deriding gutter urchin attracts from one to himself the unwelcome notice of the town drunkard.

“_Which_, it’s well known,” he whispered breathless.

His demented gaze wandered from Joshua’s face to his knees, where it fixed itself.

“‘And He said,’” he muttered, “‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. It’s come to it--a special occasion. One _or_ the other of us. Boat, sir, yes. But I never done it. _You_ ought to know--one, _or_ the other of us.”

“Then the other, by all means,” said Joshua, caustic but interested. “My good man, we don’t want to separate you from your boat. If your presence is indispensable, why, we’ll put up with it.”

Rampick, I could have thought, went a shade more livid. His dry lips seemed to crackle under his hand as he passed the back of it over them. Yet, strangely enough, I did not believe him drunk. He seemed rather in that arid, aghast condition which, with such a man, bespeaks a temporary abstinence.

Suddenly he heaved himself upright, and began heavily to busy himself with preparations for launching his craft. We all lent a hand, and in another minute, with a slide and a jump, were on board and slipping easily over the shoreward swell.

Not then, when he had settled himself to his sculls, we being all seated in the stern, did he for a moment take his eyes off our visitor. Sympathetically, I shrunk under that concentrated stare; but Joshua bore it unruffled. Still, there was something in the atmosphere to freeze our loquacity. For a long time none of us spoke at all. There had not been air enough to fill a sail; and the monotonous bump and creak of the oars in the rowlocks beat a dreary accompaniment to our depression.

At length Harry essayed a little weak conciliation.

“Tide’ll hold for us to land and see the wreck, won’t it, Mr. Rampick?” he said.

His voice broke the spell, and to strange effect. The ex-smuggler did not answer him; but he suddenly ceased rowing, and, resting on his sculls, felt out with his foot, and kicked Joshua softly on the shins.

“What are you doing?” snapped the victim, jerking his insulted limbs under him. “What do you mean, man?”

Rampick cowered where he sat.

“I see you walk, sir,” he said hoarsely. “I see you _with_ my own eyes. It’s not in nature, is it? You was kep’ from it, I say--held by the legs from rising. Who let you loose? Who patched you up to follow me? My God, I’ll be even with ’em, I will!”

He was working himself up to a mad pitch of excitement. I half rose in agitation, and looked behind me. We were already so far from the shore that its line of cliffs was a mere blurred bank in the haze. But Joshua, in the same instant, had seized the occasion to justify the character he had given of himself.

“Silence!” he said, not loud, but in a tone like a vice. “Who speaks of being out of nature, you crazy patch! Row on, and mind your business, which is to take us to the wreck!”

The maniac creature shrunk, as quickly as he had flamed up, under the bitter voice. Lowering and trembling he applied himself to his sculls once more, and the boat sped on.

“Harry,” I whispered, pale and gulping. “Did you understand?”

“Yes. Him that lies with the pistol in the hill yonder. He thinks it’s Mr. Pilbrow, and that we’ve set him free!”

He ended with an hysterical giggle. Here, in truth, it appeared, was this bedlamite’s attitude towards our guest explained. The infection of Harry’s laugh over the absurdity seized me. I struggled in vain to control myself. In another moment we were both of us doubling and rolling as if the devil were tickling our ribs.

Joshua expressed no surprise, but nodded intelligently as we gasped ourselves sober again. He attributed our merriment, no doubt, to a general sense of the ludicrous in this wretched creature’s wanderings, of the likelihood of any significance or coherence in which he had, of course, no idea. As for the man himself, he regarded Harry and me no further than if we had been squeaking mice behind a wainscot; but sat with his vision attached once more, and more cringingly than ever, to the little wintry, venomous figure in the stern.

We recovered ourselves, half fearful, from our convulsion, feeling rather, I think, like fugitives who had consciously betrayed their own whereabouts. But the explosion, in fact, had relieved the air; and thenceforth we began to talk together, moved by a common rebellion against the moral tyranny of the depression which had held us hitherto. But, for all that, it startled us near out of our skins, when Joshua of a sudden turned upon Rampick, and asked him roundly if he hadn’t any good smuggling yarns to recount to him.

“Of hidden stores, and black nights,” said he; “and the ground giving up a sudden swarm of mushroom creatures, things squat and stealthy, shouldering kegs?”

Rampick’s chest had seemed to fall in at the first word. It was painful to hear his breathing. But he made no attempt to answer.

“Come!” said Joshua. “It’s fast confidences, man. You know what you know. These young gentlemen have given you away--but no further than to me, mind. Come! What happened underground in those days, before the sea took its toll of the vaults?”

“Why, you should know, sir--_as_ well as me!”

Such a funny little voice, so strained and hoarse, like a cry at a great distance. Joshua himself was startled by it, moved, perhaps, by its distress. He persisted no further, but shrugged his shoulders, and turned to address us again.

In the meanwhile we were approaching the wreck, which for some time now had been visible to us. It hung oddly in the mist--suspended, as it seemed, in the mid-haze of sky and water, like a wreck painted on glass. Still, seen through that illusive medium, it appeared a phantom, far-off thing, when to our surprise, grown absorbed as we were in contemplation of it, our boatman gave a final stroke, and finished on it with his sculls poised.

“No further?” said I, rising all excitement now. “Can’t you take us any further, Mr. Rampick?”

I’ll swear that not once during our approach had he turned his head to canvass our distance or direction. Old crafty smuggler as he was, he had hit his mark blindfold as it were. Even as I spoke, I was aware of something stretching its endless length across our course--a great soft, iridescent fish-shaped bulk, as it might be a vast submarine monster floating dead and motionless on the surface. It shone sleek and fawny, and pitted with little blue scales of water; and in the instant of my recognizing it, our boat had floated on, and, with the way given it, had grated its nose softly in its flank.

Following the little shock and recoil, we were all on our feet.

“The sands!” whispered Harry, with glistening eyes. “That was clever of you, Mr. Rampick.”

We did not, he or I, demur to our enemy’s silence. It would have made no difference if we had. His regard, his consideration, were still all for our companion.

Across the glimmering lifts of sand, the wreck, now we were brought stationary, seemed to draw nearer and clearer--a phantom still, yet claiming some foothold on this unreal reality of an amphibious little continent. Only a broken poop it was, tilted up and its mighty entrails spilt into the drift. Another storm, any rough weather, would scatter it for ever; yet no plundered town could have stood a symbol of more awful and pathetic desolation. The haze blurred and magnified it to us where we stood; so that, huge relic as it was in reality, it looked nothing less than gigantic. Gazing on it, its ruin and isolation in that mist of waters, I felt as one might feel in alighting on a fallen colossus in a desert.

“Are we to land here?” said Joshua, breaking through the spell which had overtaken me.

“Aye,” answered the smuggler, in that one terse, low monosyllable, and with his eyes never leaving the other’s face.

“Go, you,” said Joshua, turning briskly to us two. “I will wait here, and take my turn when you’ve finished.”

We hesitated, questioning him with a dumb glance.

“Come!” he said. “The tide, as I reckon, don’t stand on ceremony.”

“Why should we any of us go, Mr. Pilbrow?” I spoke up quickly. “We can see all we want to see from here.”

“Nonsense!” he said sharply. “Who’ll credit our adventure if we don’t bring back her name?”

We still hung reluctant; but he drove us good-humouredly forward, and out over the bow. Looking back, after we had leapt to the reeking sand and were hurrying to cross it, I saw him still standing there, taut and resolute, to wave us on.

“I don’t like it, Harry,” I said; “I don’t like it. And no more did he, or he wouldn’t have stayed by Rampick. Let’s hurry all we can.”

“Well, come on!” panted my friend. “The quicker we’re there, the quicker we shall be back.”

Yard by yard, as we traversed the broad spit of sand, the looming ribs of the wreck seemed to shrink, and materialize, and take on outline. And then, in a moment, with an involuntary gasp, we had pulled up, and were standing staring. For between us and our quarry had come suddenly into view an unguessed-at channel of dim water, a hundred feet it might be across.

Harry wheeled.

“He’s done us!” he exclaimed. “He’s meaning some mischief, I’ll swear. Come back, Dick!”

With the word we were running. For a moment the bulge of the drift hid the boat from our view. The next, we had topped it, and breathed with relief to see the figure of Joshua still standing up at the bow as we had left him. For an instant only; and, in that instant, Rampick, catching sight of our returning forms, rose hurriedly and stealthily, with one of his sculls clubbed to strike. We screeched out together. The warning was quick to save Joshua from the worst, but not from secondary consequences. Instinctively he ducked, as the blade flashed over his head; but the act toppled him from his balance, and he fell from the boat prone upon the sand, from which he rolled down, clutching, into the sea. In the same moment, Rampick, using the scull he had swung for lever, pushed off from the bank, hurriedly seated himself, and in a stroke or two was out at safe distance and in deep water, where he held up, breathing stertorously as he regarded us.

By this time we were down at the edge, and, flinging ourselves flat, had caught at Joshua’s hands, where they clawed and slipped in the slobber of wet sand. The drift took the water at a deepish angle, but it was firm above for knee-hold; and in a minute or two we had drawn him up far enough to enable him to get a bite with his own nails, and then the rest was easy. As he sat to recover himself, crowing and spitting but not otherwise greatly discomposed, Harry jumped to his feet, and hailed the madman furiously--

“Come back!”

Rampick, resting on his oars, chewed his dry lips for moisture, but answered nothing.

“Come back!” screamed Harry; “or I’ll fetch you!”

He dropped, and slipped knee-deep into the water as he cried, as if to verify his threat, insane one as he knew it to be. The sea was near quiet as a mill-pond, and Rampick had only to pull a couple of indifferent strokes to increase the distance between us by some fathoms. I thought he was going to abandon us altogether and at once, and in an agony hailed him on my own account--

“Mr. Rampick! why don’t you come back? You aren’t going to leave us to drown here!”

He leaned forward, always watchful of us, and, groping under the thwarts, fetched up a black bottle, which he uncorked and put to his lips--a rejoicing swill. It gave him nerve and voice. He sagged down, between maudlin and triumphant, and answered, with a hoarse defiant laugh--

“I am, though!”

“Mr. Rampick!” I cried, “what have we done to you?”

He drank again. Every addition of this fuel made the devil roar in him.

“Done!” he yelled. “See _how_ you done--_fur_ yourselves, my hearties! You’d let him out, would you! You’d make the dead walk _to_ testify agen me! I know you. You’ve plotted and schemed agen me from the first, you parson’s whelps--and here’s what it come to. I was on the way to salvation--_till_ you crossed me--once too often. The sands ’ll keep my secret _and_ yourn. Let him out to walk, you will; but not to swim--my God, I had you there--old Jole had you there, my bucks!”

He poured down more fire, and howled and drummed his feet in a gloating frenzy.

“Had you there!” he shrieked. “You may quicken him out of fire--_out_ of rocks and fire; but you _fur_got as water squenches fire. Thought old Jole crazy, did you--poor old Jole, whose fortunes went out in the spark as him there lighted. And all the time he lay low _to_ get even with you. _Has_ he done it? _Did_ he choose his time crafty? _Did_ any one see us? When your drownded corpses comes in with the tide, who’ll know the truth? Jole--and Jole can keep a secret, once all prying apes is laid _from_ forcing his hand.”

He shook to the roaring of his own voice. The reverberating fire in his brain deafened him to any reason, reassurance, protest. We cried to him in our distraction to listen, only to calm himself and listen. Our appeals could not penetrate the pandemonium in that maniac soul. In the midst Joshua, all amazed and at sea as he was, rose to add his entreaties to ours. The effect was disastrous. At the vision of him, strung as if to fly, his coat-tails spread, the madman gripped his oars convulsively.

“Lie down!” he screamed. “What’s death to you! I ain’t going to stop! I never could abide the sight of it!”

And with the word he was pulling furiously away.

We still shrieked to him vainly. We ran up and down the sand. For the moment I felt quite blind and delirious.

All was of no avail. Yard by yard the boat drew away into the thickening mist; grew dim and dimmer, a phantom of itself; and, while still the thump of its rowlocks drummed thickly into our ears, vanished and was gone.

And then at last we came together, and, halting, looked into one another’s pallid faces like dead souls meeting on the banks of Styx.