The Mermaid, Lily Dougall [beach read .TXT] 📗

his questions as few as possible.

Was it safe, he asked, to drive to Cloud Island that day?

The other looked at him from head to foot. "Not safe," he said, "for women and childer; but for men"--the word was lingered upon for a moment--"yes, safe enough."

The innkeepers were too mindful of their manners as yet to disturb the colloquy with open interruption; but with every other sort of interruption they did disturb it, explaining by despairing gestures and direful shakings of the head that, should Caius go with this gentleman, he would be driving into the very jaws of death.

Nevertheless, after O'Shea's last words Caius had assented to the expedition, although he was uncertain whether the assent was wise or not. He had the dissatisfaction of feeling that he had been ruled, dared, like a vain schoolboy, into the hasty consent.

"Now, if you are servant to Madame Le Maitre at The Cloud, how is it that you've never been seen on this island?" It was the liveliest of the sisters who could no longer keep silence.

While Caius was packing his traps he was under the impression that O'Shea had replied that, in the first place, he had not lived long at The Cloud, and, in the second, visitors from The Cloud had not been so particularly welcome at the other islands. His remarks on the last subject were delivered with brief sarcasm. After he had started on the journey Caius wondered that he had not remembered more particularly the gist of an answer which it concerned him to hear.

At the time, however, he hastened to strap together those of his bundles which had been opened, and, under the direction of O'Shea, to clothe himself in as many garments as possible, O'Shea arguing haste for the sake of the tide, which, he said, had already begun to ebb, and there was not an hour to be lost.

The women broke forth once more, this time into open expostulation and warning. To them O'Shea vouchsafed no further word, but with an annoying assumption that the doctor's courage would quail under their warnings, he encouraged him.

"There's a mere boy, a slim lad, on my cart now," he said, "that's going with us; he's no more froightened than a gull is froightened of the sea."

Caius showed his valour by marching out of the door, a bag in either hand.

No snow had as yet fallen on the islands. The grass that was before the inn door was long and of that dry green hue that did not suggest verdure, for all the juices had gone back into the ground. It was swept into silver sheens by the wind, and as they crossed it to reach the road where the cart stood, the wind came against them all with staggering force. The four ladies came out in spite of the icy blast, and attended them to the cart, and stood to watch them as they wended their way up the rugged road that led over a hill.

The cart was a small-sized wooden one--a shallow box on wheels; no springs, no paint, had been used in its making. Some straw had been spread on the bottom, and on this Caius was directed to recline. His bags also were placed beside him. O'Shea himself sat on the front of the cart, his legs dangling, and the boy, who was "no more froightened of the journey than a sea-gull is of the sea," perched himself upon one corner of the back and looked out backwards, so that his face was turned from Caius, who only knew that he was a slim lad because he had been told so; a long gray blanket-coat with capuchin drawn over the head and far over the face covered him completely.

Caius opposed his will to the reclining attitude which had been suggested to him, and preferred to sit upon the flat bottom with the desire to keep erect; and he did sit thus for awhile, like a porcelain mandarin with nodding head, for, although the hardy pony went slowly, the jolting of the cart on the rough, frozen road was greater than it is easy for one accustomed to ordinary vehicles to imagine.

Up the hill they went, past woods of stunted birch and fir, past upland fields, from which the crops had long been gathered. They were making direct for the southern side of the island. While they ascended there was still some shelter between them and the fiercest blast of the gale, and they could still look down at the homely inn below, at the village of fishers' sheds and the dancing waters of the bay. He had only passed one night there, and yet Caius looked at this prospect almost fondly. It seemed familiar in comparison with the strange region into which he was going.

When the ridge was gained and the descent began, the wind broke upon them with all its force. He looked below and saw the road winding for a mile or more among the farms and groves of the slope, and then out across a flat bit of shrub-covered land; beyond that was the sand, stretching here, it seemed, in a tract of some square miles. The surf was dimly seen like a cloud at its edge.

It was not long that he sat up to see the view. The pony began to run down the hill; the very straw in the bottom of the cart danced. Caius cast his arms about his possessions, fearing that, heavy though they were, they would be thrown out upon the roadside, and he lay holding them. The wind swept over; he could hear it whistling against the speed of the cart; he felt it like a knife against his cheeks as he lay. He saw the boy brace himself, the lithe, strong muscles of his back, apparent only by the result of their action, swayed balancing against the jolting, while, with thickly-gloved hands, he grasped the wooden ledge on which he sat. In front O'Shea was like an image carved of the same wood as the cart, so firmly he held to it. Well, such hours pass. After a while they came out upon the soft, dry sand beyond the scrubby flat, and the horse, with impeded footsteps, trudged slowly.

The sand was so dry, driven by the wind, that the horse and cart sank in it as in driven snow. The motion, though slow, was luxurious compared to what had been. O'Shea and the boy had sprung off the cart, and were marching beside it. Caius clambered out, too, to walk beside them.

"Ye moight have stayed in, Mr. Doctor," said O'Shea. "The pony is more than equal to carrying ye."

Again Caius felt that O'Shea derided him. He hardly knew why the man's words always gave him this impression, for his manner was civil enough, and there was no particular reason for derision apparent; for, although O'Shea's figure had broadened out under the weight of years, he was not a taller man than Caius, and the latter was probably the stronger of the two. When Caius glanced later at the other's face, it appeared to him that he derived his impression from the deep, ray-like wrinkles that were like star-fish round the man's eyes; but if so, it must have been that something in the quality of the voice reflected the expression of the face, for they were not in such plight as would enable them to observe one another's faces much. The icy wind bore with it a burden of sparkling sand, so that they were often forced to muffle their faces, walking with heads bowed.

Since Caius would walk, O'Shea ordered the boy back into the cart, and the two men ploughed on through the sand beside the horse, whose every hair was turned by the wind, which now struck them sideways, and whose rugged mane and forelock were streaming horizontally, besprinkled with sand. The novelty of the situation, the beauty of the sand-wreaths, the intoxication of the air, the vivid brilliancy of the sun and the sky, delighted Caius. The blue of heaven rounded the sandscape to their present sight, a dome of blue flame over a plain whose colour was like that of an autumn leaf become sear. Caius, in his exhilaration, remarked upon the strangeness of the place, but either the prospect was too common to O'Shea to excite his interest, or the enterprise he meditated burdened his mind; he gave few words in answer, and soon they, too, relapsed into the silence that the boy and the pony had all the time observed.

An hour's walk, and another sound rang in their ears beside the whistling of the wind, low at first and fitful, louder and louder, till the roar of the surf was deafening. Then they came to the brink and heard all the notes of which the chords of its more distant music had been composed, the gasping sob of the under tow, the rush of the lifting wave as it upreared itself high, the silken break of its foam, the crash of drums with which it fell, the dash of wave against wave, and the cry of the foremost waves that bemoaned themselves prostrate upon the beach.

The cart, with its little company, turned into the narrow strip of dark damp sand that the tide had already left bare. Here the footing was much firmer, and the wind struck them obliquely. The hardy pony broke into its natural pace, a moderate trot. In spite of this pace, the progress they made was not very swift, and it was already four by the clock. O'Shea climbed to his place on the front of the cart; the boy sprang down and ran to warm himself, clapping his gloved hands as he ran. It was not long before Caius clambered into his straw seat again, and, sitting, watched the wonder of the waves. So level was the beach, so high was the surf, that from the low cart it seemed that gigantic monsters were constantly arising from the sea; and just as the fear of them overshadowed the fascinated mind, they melted away again into nothingness. As he looked at the waves he saw that their water, mixed with sand, was a yellowish brown, and dark almost to black when the curling top yawned before the downfall; but so fast did each wave break one upon the other that glossy water was only seen in glimpses, and boiling fields of foam and high crests of foam were the main substance of all that was to be seen for a hundred yards from the shore.

Proceeding thus, they soon came to what was actually the end of the island, and were on the narrow ridge of sand-dunes which extended a distance of some twenty miles to the next island. The sand-hills rising sheer from the shore, fifty, sixty, or a hundred feet in height, bordered their road on the right. To avoid the soft dry sand of their base the pony often trotted in the shallow flow of the foam, which even yet now and then crept over all the damp beach to the high-water mark. The wind was like spur and lash; the horse fled before it. Eyes and ears grew accustomed even to the threatening of the sea-monsters. The sun of the November afternoon sank nearer and nearer the level of sand and foam; they could not see the ocean beyond the foam. When it grew large and ruddy in the level atmosphere, and some flakes of red, red gold appeared round it, lying where the edge of the sea must be, like the Islands of the Blessed, when the crests of the breakers near and far