John Rex had put into execution the first part of his scheme.
At the moment when, seeing Burgess's boat near the sand-spit, hehad uttered the warning cry heard by Vetch, he turned back into thedarkness, and made for the water's edge at a point some distance fromthe Neck. His desperate hope was that, the attention of the guard beingconcentrated on the escaping boat, he might, favoured by the darknessand the confusion--swim to the peninsula. It was not a very marvellousfeat to accomplish, and he had confidence in his own powers. Oncesafe on the peninsula, his plans were formed. But, owing to the strongwesterly wind, which caused an incoming tide upon the isthmus, it wasnecessary for him to attain some point sufficiently far to the southwardto enable him, on taking the water, to be assisted, not impeded, bythe current. With this view, he hurried over the sandy hummocks atthe entrance to the Neck, and ran backwards towards the sea. In a fewstrides he had gained the hard and sandy shore, and, pausing to listen,heard behind him the sound of footsteps. He was pursued. The footstepsstopped, and then a voice cried--
"Surrender!"
It was McNab, who, seeing Rex's retreat, had daringly followed him. JohnRex drew from his breast Troke's pistol and waited.
"Surrender!" cried the voice again, and the footsteps advanced twopaces.
At the instant that Rex raised the weapon to fire, a vivid flash oflightning showed him, on his right hand, on the ghastly and pallidocean, two boats, the hindermost one apparently within a few yards ofhim. The men looked like corpses. In the distance rose Cape Surville,and beneath Cape Surville was the hungry sea. The scene vanished in aninstant--swallowed up almost before he had realized it. But the shockit gave him made him miss his aim, and, flinging away the pistol with acurse, he turned down the path and fled. McNab followed.
The path had been made by frequent passage from the station, and Rexfound it tolerably easy running. He had acquired--like most men who livemuch in the dark--that cat-like perception of obstacles which is duerather to increased sensitiveness of touch than increased acutenessof vision. His feet accommodated themselves to the inequalities of theground; his hands instinctively outstretched themselves towards theoverhanging boughs; his head ducked of its own accord to any obtrusivesapling which bent to obstruct his progress. His pursuer was not sofortunate. Twice did John Rex laugh mentally, at a crash and scramblethat told of a fall, and once--in a valley where trickled a littlestream that he had cleared almost without an effort--he heard a splashthat made him laugh outright. The track now began to go uphill, and Rexredoubled his efforts, trusting to his superior muscular energy toshake off his pursuer. He breasted the rise, and paused to listen. Thecrashing of branches behind him had ceased, and it seemed that he wasalone.
He had gained the summit of the cliff. The lights of the Neck wereinvisible. Below him lay the sea. Out of the black emptiness came puffsof sharp salt wind. The tops of the rollers that broke below wereblown off and whirled away into the night--white patches, swallowed upimmediately in the increasing darkness. From the north side of the baywas borne the hoarse roar of the breakers as they dashed against theperpendicular cliffs which guarded Forrestier's Peninsula. At hisfeet arose a frightful shrieking and whistling, broken at intervals byreports like claps of thunder. Where was he? Exhausted and breathless,he sank down into the rough scrub and listened. All at once, on thetrack over which he had passed, he heard a sound that made him bound tohis feet in deadly fear--the bay of a dog!
He thrust his hand to his breast for the remaining pistol, and uttered acry of alarm. He had dropped it. He felt round about him in the darknessfor some stick or stone that might serve as a weapon. In vain. Hisfingers clutched nothing but prickly scrub and coarse grass. The sweatran down his face. With staring eyeballs, and bristling hair, he staredinto the darkness, as if he would dissipate it by the very intensity ofhis gaze. The noise was repeated, and, piercing through the roar of windand water, above and below him, seemed to be close at hand. He heard aman's voice cheering the dog in accents that the gale blew away fromhim before he could recognize them. It was probable that some of thesoldiers had been sent to the assistance of McNab. Capture, then,was certain. In his agony, the wretched man almost promised himselfrepentance, should he escape this peril. The dog, crashing through theunderwood, gave one short, sharp howl, and then ran mute.
The darkness had increased the gale. The wind, ravaging the hollowheaven, had spread between the lightnings and the sea an impenetrablecurtain of black cloud. It seemed possible to seize upon this curtainand draw its edge yet closer, so dense was it. The white and ragingwaters were blotted out, and even the lightning seemed unable topenetrate that intense blackness. A large, warm drop of rain fell uponRex's outstretched hand, and far overhead rumbled a wrathful peal ofthunder. The shrieking which he had heard a few moments ago had ceased,but every now and then dull but immense shocks, as of some mighty birdflapping the cliff with monstrous wings, reverberated around him, andshook the ground where he stood. He looked towards the ocean, and atall misty Form--white against the all-pervading blackness--beckonedand bowed to him. He saw it distinctly for an instant, and then, withan awful shriek, as of wrathful despair, it sank and vanished. Maddenedwith a terror he could not define, the hunted man turned to meet thematerial peril that was so close at hand.
With a ferocious gasp, the dog flung himself upon him. John Rex wasborne backwards, but, in his desperation, he clutched the beast by thethroat and belly, and, exerting all his strength, flung him off. Thebrute uttered one howl, and seemed to lie where he had fallen; whileabove his carcase again hovered that white and vaporous column. It wasstrange that McNab and the soldier did not follow up the advantage theyhad gained. Courage--perhaps he should defeat them yet! He had beenlucky to dispose of the dog so easily. With a fierce thrill of renewedhope, he ran forward; when at his feet, in his face, arose that mistyForm, breathing chill warning, as though to wave him back. The terror athis heels drove him on. A few steps more, and he should gain the summitof the cliff. He could feel the sea roaring in front of him in thegloom. The column disappeared; and in a lull of wind, uprose from theplace where it had been such a hideous medley of shrieks, laughter, andexultant wrath, that John Rex paused in horror. Too late. The groundgave way--it seemed--beneath his feet. He was falling--clutching, invain, at rocks, shrubs, and grass. The cloud-curtain lifted, and bythe lightning that leaped and played about the ocean, John Rex found anexplanation of his terrors, more terrible than they themselves had been.The track he had followed led to that portion of the cliff in which thesea had excavated the tunnel-spout known as the Devil's Blow-hole.
Clinging to a tree that, growing half-way down the precipice, hadarrested his course, he stared into the abyss. Before him--already highabove his head--was a gigantic arch of cliff. Through this arch he saw,at an immense distance below him, the raging and pallid ocean. Beneathhim was an abyss splintered with black rocks, turbid and raucous withtortured water. Suddenly the bottom of this abyss seemed to advance tomeet him; or, rather, the black throat of the chasm belched a volume ofleaping, curling water, which mounted to drown him. Was it fancy thatshowed him, on the surface of the rising column, the mangled carcase ofthe dog?
The chasm into which John Rex had fallen was shaped like a huge funnelset up on its narrow end. The sides of this funnel were rugged rock, andin the banks of earth lodged here and there upon projections, a scrubbyvegetation grew. The scanty growth paused abruptly half-way down thegulf, and the rock below was perpetually damp from the upthrownspray. Accident--had the convict been a Meekin, we might term itProvidence--had lodged him on the lowest of these banks of earth. Incalm weather he would have been out of danger, but the lightning flashrevealed to his terror-sharpened sense a black patch of dripping rock onthe side of the chasm some ten feet above his head. It was evident thatupon the next rising of the water-spout the place where he stood wouldbe covered with water.
The roaring column mounted with hideous swiftness. Rex felt it rush athim and swing him upward. With both arms round the tree, h
e clutched thesleeves of his jacket with either hand. Perhaps if he could maintain hishold he might outlive the shock of that suffocating torrent. He felthis feet rudely seized, as though by the hand of a giant, and pluckedupwards. Water gurgled in his ears. His arms seemed about to be tornfrom their sockets. Had the strain lasted another instant, he must haveloosed his hold; but, with a wild hoarse shriek, as though it was somesea-monster baffled of its prey, the column sank, and left him gasping,bleeding, half-drowned, but alive. It was impossible that he couldsurvive another shock, and in his agony he unclasped his stiffenedfingers, determined to resign himself to his fate. At that instant,however, he saw on the wall of rock that hollowed on his right hand, ared and lurid light, in the midst of which fantastically bobbed hitherand thither the gigantic shadow of a man. He cast his eyes upwards andsaw, slowly descending into the gulf, a blazing bush tied to a rope.McNab was taking advantage of the pause in the spouting to examine thesides of the Blow-hole.
A despairing hope seized John Rex. In another instant the light wouldreveal his figure, clinging like a limpet to the rock, to those above.He must be detected in any case; but if they could lower the ropesufficiently, he might clutch it and be saved. His dread of the horribledeath that was beneath him overcame his resolution to avoid recapture.The long-drawn agony of the retreating water as it was sucked backagain into the throat of the chasm had ceased, and he knew that the nexttremendous pulsation of the sea below would hurl the spuming destructionup upon him. The gigantic torch slowly descended, and he had alreadydrawn in his breath for a shout which should make itself heard above theroar of the wind and water, when a strange appearance on the face of thecliff made him pause. About six feet from him--glowing like molten goldin the gusty glow of the burning tree--a round sleek stream of waterslipped from the rock into the darkness, like a serpent from its hole.Above this stream a dark spot defied the torchlight, and John Rex felthis heart leap with one last desperate hope as he comprehended thatclose to him was one of those tortuous drives which the worm-like actionof the sea bores in such caverns as that in which he found himself. Thedrive, opened first to the light of the day by the natural convulsionwhich had raised the mountain itself above ocean level, probablyextended into the bowels of the cliff. The stream ceased to let itselfout of the crevice; it was then likely that the rising column of waterdid not penetrate far into this wonderful hiding-place.
Endowed with a wisdom, which in one placed in less desperate positionwould have been madness, John Rex shouted to his pursuers. "The rope!the rope!" The words, projected against the sides of the enormousfunnel, were pitched high above the blast, and, reduplicated by athousand echoes, reached the ears of those above.
"He's alive!" cried McNab, peering into the abyss. "I see him. Look!"
The soldier whipped the end of the bullock-hide lariat round the tree towhich he held, and began to oscillate it, so that the blazing bush mightreach the ledge on which the daring convict sustained himself. The groanwhich preceded the fierce belching forth of the torrent was cast up tothem from below.
"God be gude to the puir felly!" said the pious young Scotchman,catching his breath.
A white spume was visible at the bottom of the gulf, and the groanchanged into a rapidly increasing bellow. John Rex, eyeing the blazingpendulum, that with longer and longer swing momentarily neared him,looked up to the black heaven for the last time with a muttered prayer.The bush--the flame fanned by the motion--flung a crimson glow upon hisfrowning features which, as he caught the rope, had a sneer of triumphon them. "Slack out! slack out!" he cried; and then, drawing the burningbush towards him, attempted to stamp out the fire with his feet.
The soldier set his body against the tree trunk, and gripped the ropehard, turning his head away from the fiery pit below him. "Hold tight,your honour," he muttered to McNab. "She's coming!"
The bellow changed into a roar, the roar into a shriek, and with a gustof wind and spray, the seething sea leapt up out of the gulf. John Rex,unable to extinguish the flame, twisted his arm about the rope, and theinstant before the surface of the rising water made a momentary floor tothe mouth of the cavern, he spurned the cliff desperately with his feet,and flung himself across the chasm. He had already clutched the rock,and thrust himself forward, when the tremendous volume of water struckhim. McNab and the soldier felt the sudden pluck of the rope and saw thelight swing across the abyss. Then the fury of the waterspout burst witha triumphant scream, the tension ceased, the light was blotted out, andwhen the column sank, there dangled at the end of the lariat nothingbut the drenched and blackened skeleton of the she-oak bough. Amid aterrific peal of thunder, the long pent-up rain descended, and a suddenghastly rending asunder of the clouds showed far below them the heavingocean, high above them the jagged and glistening rocks, and at theirfeet the black and murderous abyss of the Blowhole--empty.
They pulled up the useless rope in silence; and another dead treelighted and lowered showed them nothing.
"God rest his puir soul," said McNab, shuddering. "He's out o' our han'snow."
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 57