CHAPTER XIII.
THE FLIGHT AND PURSUIT.
Danny tore himself away with heart and brain aflame. Were they to meet again? Yes. For one terrible and perilous moment they were yet to stand face to face. As he ran down the road toward the town, Danny encountered a gang of men with lanterns, whooping, laughing, singing carols, and beating the bushes. It was the night before Christmas-eve, and they were "hunting the wren." Tommy Tear and Davy Cain were among them. Danny heard their loud voices, and knew they had trapped the harbor-master. The first act in to-night's tragedy had begun.
Two hours and a half later Mona passed the same troop of men. They were now standing in the Market-place. Tommy Tear and Davy Cain had a long pole from shoulder to shoulder, and from this huge bracket a tiny bird--a wren--was suspended. It was one of their Christmas customs. Their companions came up at intervals and plucked a feather from the wren's breast. Tommy-Bill-beg was singing a carol. A boy held a lantern to a crumpled paper, from which the unlettered coxcomb pretended to sing.
Mona hurried on. Her immediate destination was the net factory. There she found the company of nine or ten men. She was taken into the midst of them. "This is the young woman," shouted Kerruish Kinvig; "and when some of you fellows," he added, "have been police for fifty years, and are grown gray in the service, you may do worse than come here and go to school to this girl of two-and-twenty."
There was some superior and depreciatory laughter, and then Mona was required to repeat what she knew. When she had done so she did not wait for official instructions. She quietly and resolutely announced her intention of going on to the cliff-head above Contrary with a lantern in hand. When the light on the pier was run down by the fishing-boat, she would light her lantern and turn it toward the castle as a sign to the men in hiding there. The determination and decision of this girl brooked no question. The police agreed to her scheme. And had she not been the root and origin of all their movements, and the sole cause that they were there at all?
But Mona had yet another proposal, and to herself this last was the most vital of all. The four men who were to watch Bill Kisseck's house must have a guide, or by their lumbering movements they would awaken suspicion, and the birds would be frightened and not snared. Christian had not been found. "He's off to Ramsey, no doubt," suggested Kinvig. "I'll be guide to you myself," said Mona. "I'll take you to the Head, place you there, and then go off to my own station." And so it was agreed. It is not usually a man's shrewdness that can match a woman's wit at an emergency like this. And then the men in this case were police—a palliating circumstance!
Half an hour passed, and Mona was on the cliff-head. She had so placed the four men that they could not see her own position or know whether she duly and promptly lit her lantern or not. The night was still very dark. Not a star was shining; no moon appeared. Yet, standing where she stood, with the black hill behind her, she could at least descry something of the sea in front. The water, lighter than the land, showed faintly below. Mona could trace the line of white breakers around the Castle Isle. If a boat's sail came close to the coast, she could see that also. The darkness of the night might aid her. There was light enough for her movements, but too little for the movements of the four strangers behind her.
Mona saw the boat leave the shore that carried Kinvig and his four assistants across the strait to the castle. In a moment she lost it in the black shadow. Then she heard the grating of its keel on the shingle, and the clank of the little chain that moored it.
Now everything depended on Danny. Had the lad wit enough to comprehend all her meaning? Even if so, was it in human nature to do so much as she expected him to do from no motive, but such as sprang from hopeless love? God brighten the lad's dense intellect for this night at least! Heaven ennoble our poor, selfish, uncertain human nature for one brief hour!
Mona strained her ear for the splash of an oar. Danny ought to be stirring now. But no; Mona could hear nothing but the murmur of the waters on the pebbles and their distant boom in the bay.
Look! coming up to the west coast of the castle were the sails of a fishing-boat silhouetted against the leaden sky. It was a lugger. Mona could see both mainmast and mizzen with mainsail and yawl. It was the Ben-my-Chree. Christian was there, and he was in deadly peril. She herself had endangered his liberty and life. The girl was almost beside herself with terror.
But look again! Though no sound of oars could reach her, she could now see the clear outline of a boat scudding through the lighter patch of water just inside the castle's shadow. It was Danny! God bless and keep him on earth and in heaven! How the lad rowed! Light as the dip of a feather, and swift as the eagle flies! Bravely, Danny, bravely!
The clock in the tower of the old church in the Market-place was striking. How the bell echoed on this lonely height!—six, seven, eight, nine! Nine o'clock? Then the merchantman ought to be near at hand. Mona strained her eyes into the darkness. She could see nothing. Perhaps the ship would not come. Perhaps Heaven itself had ordered that the man she loved should be guiltless of this crime. Merciful Heaven, let it be so, let it be so!
The fishing-boat had disappeared. Yes, her sails were gone. But out at sea, far out, half a league away—what black thing was there? Oh, it must be a cloud; that was all. No doubt a storm was brewing. What was the funny sailor's saying that Ruby laughed at when Danny repeated it? No, no! it was looming larger and larger, and it was nearer than she had thought. It was—yes, it was a sail. There could be no doubt of it now. The merchantman was outside, and she was less than half a mile away. Bill Kisseck and the three men who were to go ashore on the west of the Castle Isle must now have landed. Christian was one of them. Within fifty yards five men lay in wait to capture them. See, the Ben-my-Chree was fetching away to leeward. She was doubling the island rock and coming into harbor. How awkwardly the man at the tiller was tacking. That was a ruse, lest he was watched. To Mona the suspense of the moment was terrible. The very silence was awful. She felt an impulse to scream.
What about Danny? Had he reached the Lockjaw?
He must have rowed like a man possessed, to be there already. The Ben-my-Chree would sweep into harbor at the next tack. Could Danny get up onto the pier in time to see the lamp on the pier go down?
Mona could see the black outline of the Lockjaw headland from where she was stationed. Her heart seemed to stand still. She turned her eyes first to the pier, then to the Lockjaw, and then to the cloud of black sail outside that grew larger every instant.
Look again—the fishing-boat is coming in; she is almost covering the lamp on the pier; she has swept it down; it is gone, and all is blank, palpable darkness. Mona covers her eyes with her hands.
Is Danny ready? Quick, quick, Danny; one minute lost and all is lost! No light yet on the Lockjaw.
Bravo! Mona's heart leaps to her mouth. There is a light on the Lockjaw Head! Thank God and poor dear Danny forever and ever.
And now, the lamp down, the gorse burning, the merchantman drawing nearer and nearer, what must Mona herself do? She had promised to give the sign to the men in the castle the instant the light on the pier was run down. Then they would know that it was not too soon to pounce down on Kisseck and his men, with part of their plot—the least dangerous part, but still a punishable part—carried into effect. But Mona did not light her lantern. She never meant to do it so soon. She must first see some reason to believe that Christian and his companions had taken Danny's warning.
She waited one minute—two, three. No sign yet. Meantime the black cloud of sail in the bay was drawing closer. There were living men aboard of that ship, and they were running on to the rocks. This suspense was agony. Mona felt that she must do something. But what?
If she were to light her lantern now, she might save the merchantman; but then Christian would be pounced upon and taken. If she were not to light her lantern soon, the ship would be gored to pieces on the Castle Isle, and perhaps all hands would be lost. What was Mona to do? The tension was terrible.
She strode up and down the hillside—up and down, up and down.
Three minutes gone—a fourth minute going. Not a sound from the west coast of the castle. Perhaps Christian, Kisseck, and the rest had not landed. She must not let the merchantman be wrecked. Her lantern must be lit for the crew's sake. Yes; they were men, living men—men with wives who loved them, and children who climbed to their knees. Mona thought of Christian and of Ruby. It was a fierce moment of conflicting passion. Four minutes at least had gone. Mona had decided to light her lantern, come what would or could. She was in the act of doing so, when she heard footsteps on the cliff behind her. The four strangers had seen the light on the pier go down. They thought it must be time for them to be moving. Either Kinvig and the other four in the castle had taken their men, or they had missed them. In either case their own time for action had gone.
Mona, in a fever of excitement, affected certain knowledge that Kisseck's men must be captured. She recommended the police to go down to the shore and wait quietly for their friends. But at that moment they caught sight of Danny's fire on the Lockjaw Head. They suspected mischief, and declared their intention of going off to it.
At the same moment Mona's quicker eyes, now preternaturally quick, caught sight of a boat clearing the west coast of the Castle Rock, and sailing fast toward the Lockjaw. It was Christian's boat. Again Mona felt an impulse to scream.
And now there came loud shouts from the castle. At the sign of Mona's lantern, Kinvig and his followers had leaped out of their ambush, only to find their men gone. Then they had run off to the creek in which they had left their boat, meaning to give chase——only to find that the boat had disappeared. There had been treachery somewhere. They were imprisoned on the Castle Rock, and so they shouted, loud and long, to their comrades on the cliff.
Mona thought she would have laughed yet louder and longer had she dared. But the police were still with her, and the desire to laugh was quickly swallowed up in fresh fear. She took the strangers to the high path that led to the Lockjaw. "Follow this," she said, "and take no other, as you value your limbs and necks." She told them to be very careful as they passed the open shaft of the old lead–mine. It would lie three yards on their right. Away they went.
What had happened to the merchantman? She had seen danger, and was already beating down the bay. She and her crew were safe. Putting down the lantern on the hill–side, Mona ran with all speed to Kisseck's cottage. In the darkness she almost stumbled down the little precipice on to the back of the roof. Running round the path, she pushed her way into the house. Bridget Kisseck was there. In breathless haste Mona told the woman that the police were after Kisseck and his friends; urged her to get pipes, tobacco, cards, ale, spirits, and the like on the table. The men would be here in three minutes. They must make pretence that they had never been out.
Then Mona ran back to the angle of the two mountain paths, the high path and the low one.
Bridget, who had not comprehended Mona's instructions, took fright at her intelligence, put on her shawl and bonnet, and, without waiting for her husband, hurried away to the town.