Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📗

me before. So when we heard once more the warning crash and thunder of the returning wave we were but a fathom distant from the rope. 'Take heart, lad,' he cried; ''tis now or never,' and as the water reached our breasts gave me a fierce shove forward with his hands. There was a roar of water in my ears, with a great shouting of the men upon the beach, and then I caught the rope. CHAPTER 19 ON THE BEACH

Toll for the brave,
  The grave that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave
  Fast by their native shore—Cowper

The night was cold, and I had nothing on me save breeches and boots, and those drenched with the sea, and had been wrestling with the surf so long that there was little left in me. Yet once I clutched the rope I clung to it for very life, and in a minute found myself in the midst of the beachmen. I heard them shout again, and felt strong hands seize me, but could not see their faces for a mist that swam before my eyes, and could not speak because my throat and tongue were cracked with the salt water, and the voice would not come. There was a crowd about me of men and some women, and I spread out my hands, blindly, to catch hold of them, but my knees failed and let me down upon the beach. And after that I remember only having coats flung over me, and being carried off out of the wind, and laid in warmest blankets before a fire. I was numb with the cold, my hair was matted with the salt, and my flesh white and shrivelled, but they forced liquor into my mouth, and so I lay in drowsy content till utter weariness bound me in sleep.

It was a deep and dreamless sleep for hours, and when it left me, gently and as it were inch by inch, I found I was still lying wrapped in blankets by the fire. Oh, what a vast and infinite peace was that, to lie there half-asleep, yet wake enough to know that I had slipped my prison and the pains of death, and was a free man here in my native place! At last I shifted myself a little, growing more awake; and opening my eyes saw I was not alone, for two men sat at a table by me with glasses and a bottle before them.

'He is coming-to,' said one, 'and may live yet to tell us who he is, and from what port his craft sailed.'

'There has been many a craft,' the other said, 'has sailed for many a port, and made this beach her last; and many an honest man has landed on it, and never one alive in such a sea. Nor would this one be living either, if it had not been for that other brave heart to stand by and save him. Brave heart, brave heart,' he said over to himself. 'Here, pass me the bottle or I shall get the vapours. 'Tis good against these early chills, and I have not been in this place for ten years past, since poor Elzevir was cut adrift.'

I could not see the speaker's face from where I lay upon the floor, yet seemed to know his voice; and so was fumbling in my weakened mind to put a name to it, when he spoke of Elzevir, and sent my thoughts flying elsewhere.

'Elzevir,' I said, 'where is Elzevir?' and sat up to look round, expecting to see him lying near me, and remembering the wreck more clearly now, and how he had saved me with that last shove forward on the beach. But he was not to be seen, and so I guessed that his great strength had brought him round quicker than had my youth, and that he was gone back to the beach.

'Hush,' said one of the men at the table, 'lie down and get to sleep again'; and then he added, speaking to his comrade: 'His brain is wandering yet: do you see how he has caught up my words about Elzevir?'

'No,' I struck in, 'my head is clear enough; I am speaking of Elzevir
Block. I pray you tell me where he is. Is he well again?' They got up
and stared at one another and at me, when I named Elzevir Block, and then
I knew the one that spoke for Master Ratsey only greyer than he was.

'Who are you?' he cried, 'who talk of Elzevir Block.'

'Do you not know me, Master Ratsey?' and I looked full in his face. 'I am
John Trenchard, who left you so long ago. I pray you tell me where is
Master Block?'

Master Ratsey looked as if he had seen a ghost, and was struck dumb at first: but then ran up and shook me by the hand so warmly that I fell back again on my pillow, while he poured out questions in a flood. How had I fared, where had I been, whence had I come? until I stopped him, saying: 'Softly, kind friend, and I will answer; only tell me first, where is Master Elzevir?'

'Nay, that I cannot say,' he answered, 'for never a soul has set eyes on
Elzevir since that summer morning we put thee and him ashore at Newport.'

'Oh, fool me not!' I cried out, chafing at his excuses; 'I am not wandering now. 'Twas Elzevir that saved me in the surf last night. 'Twas he that landed with me.'

There was a look of sad amaze that came on Ratsey's face when I said that; a look that woke in me an awful surmise. 'What!' cried he, 'was that Master Elzevir that dragged thee through the surf?'

'Ay, 'twas he landed with me, 'twas he landed with me,' I said; trying, as it were, to make true by repeating that which I feared was not the truth. There was a minute's silence, and then Ratsey spoke very softly: 'There was none landed with you; there was no soul saved from that ship alive save you.'

His words fell, one by one, upon my ear as if they were drops of molten lead. 'It is not true,' I cried; 'he pulled me up the beach himself, and it was he that pushed me forward to the rope.'

'Ay, he saved thee, and then the under-tow got hold of him and swept him down under the curl. I could not see his face, but might have known there never was a man, save Elzevir, could fight the surf on Moonfleet beach like that. Yet had we known 'twas he, we could have done no more, for many risked their lives last night to save you both. We could have done no more.' Then I gave a great groan for utter anguish, to think that he had given up the safety he had won for himself, and laid down his life, there on the beach, for me; to think that he had died on the threshold of his home; that I should never get a kind look from him again, nor ever hear his kindly voice.

It is wearisome to others to talk of deep grief, and beside that no words, even of the wisest man, can ever set it forth, nor even if we were able could our memory bear to tell it. So I shall not speak more of that terrible blow, only to say that sorrow, so far from casting my body down, as one might have expected, gave it strength, and I rose up from the mattress where I had been lying. They tried to stop me, and even to hold me back, but for all I was so weak, I pushed them aside and must needs fling a blanket round me and away back to the beach.

The morning was breaking as I left the Why Not?, for 'twas in no other place but that I lay, and the wind, though still high, had abated. There were light clouds crossing the heaven very swiftly, and between them patches of clear sky where the stars were growing paler before the dawn. The stars were growing paler; but there was another star, that shone out from the Manor woods above the village, although I could not see the house, and told me Grace, like the wise virgins, kept her lamp alight all night. Yet even that light shone without lustre for me then, for my heart was too full to think of anything but of him who had laid down his life for mine, and of the strong kind heart that was stilled for ever.

'Twas well I knew the way, so sure of old, from Why Not? to beach; for I took no heed to path or feet, but plunged along in the morning dusk, blind with sorrow and weariness of spirit. There was a fire of driftwood burning at the back of the beach, and round it crouched a group of men in reefing jackets and sou'westers waiting for morning to save what they might from the wreck; but I gave them a wide berth and so passed in the darkness without a word, and came to the top of the beach. There was light enough to make out what was doing. The sea was running very high, but with the falling wind the waves came in more leisurely and with less of broken water, curling over in a tawny sweep and regular thunderous beat all along the bay for miles. There was no sign left of the hull of the Aurungzebe, but the beach was strewn with so much wreckage as one would have thought could never come from so small a ship. There were barrels and kegs, gratings and hatch-covers, booms and pieces of masts and trucks; and beside all that, the heaving water in-shore was covered with a floating mask of broken match-wood, and the waves, as they curled over, carried up and dashed down on the pebble planks and beams beyond number. There were a dozen or more of men on the seaward side of the beach, with oilskins to keep the wet out, prowling up and down the pebbles to see what they could lay their hands on; and now and then they would run down almost into the white fringe, risking their lives to save a keg as they had risked them to save their fellows last night—as they had risked their lives to save ours, as Elzevir had risked his life to save mine, and lost it there in the white fringe.

I sat down at the top of the beach, with elbows on knees, head between hands, and face set out to sea, not knowing well why I was there or what I sought, but only thinking that Elzevir was floating somewhere in that floating skin of wreck-wood, and that I must be at hand to meet him when he came ashore. He would surely come in time, for I had seen others come ashore that way. For when the Bataviaman went on the beach, I stood as near her as our rescuers had stood to us last night, and there were some aboard who took the fatal leap from off her bows and tried to battle through the surf. I was so near them I could mark their features and read the wild hope in their faces at the first, and then the under-tow took hold of them, and never one that saved his life that day. And yet all came to beach at last, and I knew them by their dead faces for the men I had seen hoping against hope 'twixt ship and shore; some naked and some clothed, some bruised and sorely beaten by the pebbles and the sea, and some sound and untouched—all came to beach at last.

So I sat and waited for him to come; and none of the beach-walkers said anything to me, the Moonfleet men thinking I came from Ringstave, and the Langton men that I belonged to Moonfleet; and both that I had marked some cask at sea for my own and was waiting till it should come in. Only after a while Master Ratsey joined me, and sitting down by me, begged me to eat bread and meat that he had brought. Now I had little heart to eat, but took what he gave me to save myself from his importunities, and having once tasted was led by nature to eat all, and was much benefited thereby. Yet I could not talk with Ratsey, nor answer any of his questions, though another