CHAPTER XXIV.—ON THE CHANCE.

WHEN the fishing boats came within half a cable’s length of the cutter, Lord Innisfail gave up the tiller to Brian, who was well qualified to be the organizer of the expedition, having the reputation of being familiar with the haunts and habits of the seals that may be found—by such as know as much about them as Brian—among the great caves that pierce for several miles the steep cliffs of the coast.

The responsibility of steering a boat under the headlands, either North or South, was not sought by Lord Innisfail. For perhaps three hundred and fifty days in every year it would be impossible to approach the cliffs in any craft; but as Brian took the tiller he gave a knowing glance around the coast and assured his lordship that it was a jewel of a day for a seal-hunt, and added that it was well that he had brought only the largest of the fishing boats, for anything smaller would sink with the weight of the catch of seals.

He took in the slack of the main sheet and sent the cutter flying direct to the Northern headland, the luggers following in her wake, though scarcely preserving stations or distances with that rigorous naval precision which occasionally sends an ironclad to the bottom.

The man-of-war may run upon a reef, and the country may be called on to pay half a million for the damage; but it can never be said that she fails to maintain her station prescribed by the etiquette of the Royal Navy in following the flagship, which shows that the British sailor, wearing epaulettes, is as true as the steel that his ship is made of, and a good deal truer than that of some of the guns which he is asked to fire.

In a short time the boats had cleared the headland, and it seemed to some of the cutter’s company as if they were given an opportunity of looking along the whole west coast of Ireland in a moment. Northward and southward, like a study in perspective, the lines of indented cliffs stretched until they dwindled away into the gray sky. The foam line that was curved as it curled around the enormous rocks close at hand, was straightened out in the distance and never quite disappeared.

“Talk of the Great Wall of China,” said Lord Innisfail, pointing proudly to the splendid chain of cliffs. “Talk of the Great Wall of China indeed! What is it compared with that?”

He spoke as proudly as if he owned everything within that line of cliffs, though he thanked heaven every night that he only owned a few thousand acres in Ireland.

“What indeed—what indeed?” said Mr. Durdan.

One of the men thought the moment opportune for airing a theory that he had to the effect that the Great Wall of China was not built by the Chinese to keep the surrounding nations out, but by the surrounding nations to keep the Chinese in.

It was a feasible theory, suggesting that the Chinese immigration question existed among the Thibetans some thousands of years ago, to quite as great an extent as it does in some other directions to-day. But it requires to be a very strong theory to stand the strain of the Atlantic waves and a practically unlimited view of the coast of Ireland. So no discussion arose.

Already upon some of the flat rocks at the entrance to the great caves the black head of a seal might be seen. It did not remain long in view, however. Brian had scarcely pointed it out with a whisper to such persons as were near him, when it disappeared.

“It’s the wary boys they are, to be sure!” he remarked confidentially.

His boldness in steering among the rocks made some persons more than usually thoughtful. Fortunately the majority of those aboard the cutter knew nothing of his display of skill. They remained quite unaware of the jagged rocks that the boat just cleared; and when he brought the craft to the lee of a cliff, which formed a natural breakwater and a harbour of ripples, none of these people seemed surprised.

Lord Innisfail and a few yachtsmen who knew something of sailing, drew long breaths. They knew what they had escaped.

One of the hands got into the punt and took a line to the cliff to moor the yacht when the sails had been lowered, and by the time that the mooring was effected, the other boats had come into the natural harbour—it would have given protection—that is, natural protection, to a couple of ironclads—no power can protect them from their own commanders.

“Now, my lard,” said Brian, who seemed at last to realize his responsibilities, “all we’ve got to do is to grab the craythurs; but that same’s a caution. We’ll be at least an hour-and-a-half in the caves, and as it will be cold work, and maybe wet work, maybe some of their honours wouldn’t mind standing by the cutter.”

The suggestion was heartily approved of by some of the yacht’s company. Lady Innisfail said she was perfectly satisfied with such local colour as was available without leaving the yacht, and it was understood that Miss Avon would remain by her side. Mr. Airey said he thought he could face with cheerfulness a scheme of existence that did not include sitting with varying degrees of uneasiness in a small boat while other men speared an inoffensive seal.

“Such explanations are not for the Atlantic Ocean,” said Harold, getting over the side of the yacht into the punt that Brian had hauled close—Lord Innisfail was already in the bow.

In a short time, by the skilful admiralship of Brian, the other boats, which were brought up from the luggers, were manned, and their stations were assigned to them, one being sent to explore a cave a short distance off, while another was to remain at the entrance to pick up any seals that might escape. The same plan was adopted in regard to the great cave, the entrance to which was close to where the yacht was moored. Brian arranged that his boat should enter the cave, while another, fully manned, should stand by the rocks to capture the refugees.

All the boats then started for their stations—all except the punt with Brian at the yoke lines, Harold and Mr. Durdan in the stern sheets, one of the hands at the paddles, and Lord Innisfail in the bows; for when this craft was about to push off, Brian gave an exclamation of discontent.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Lord Innisfail.

“Plenty’s the matter, my lard,” said Brian. “The sorra a bit of luck we’ll have this day if we leave the ladies behind us.”

“Then we must put up with bad luck,” said Lord Innisfail. “Go down on your knees to her ladyship and ask her to come with us if you think that will do any good.”

“Oh, her ladyship would come without prayers if she meant to,” said Brian. “But it’s Miss Avon that’s open to entreaty. For the love of heaven and the encouragement of sport, step into the boat, Sheila, and you’ll have something to talk about for the rest of your life.”

Beatrice shook her head at the appeal, but that wouldn’t do for Brian. “Look, my lady, look at her eyes, aren’t they just jumping out of her head like young trout in a stream in May?” he cried to Lady Innisfail. “Isn’t she waiting for you to say the word to let her come, an’ not a word does any gentleman in the boat speak on her behalf.”

The gentlemen remained dumb, but Lady Innisfail declared that if Miss Avon was not afraid of a wetting and cared to go in the boat, there was no reason why she should not do so.

In another moment Beatrice had stepped into the punt and it had pushed off with a cheer from Brian. The men in the other boats, now in the distance, hearing the cheer, but without knowing why it arose, sent back an answer that aroused the thousand echoes of the cliffs and the ten thousand sea birds that arose in a cloud from every crevice of the rocks. Thus it was that the approach of the boat to the great cave did not take place in silence.

Harold had not uttered a word. He had not even looked at Edmund Airey’s face to see what expression it wore when Beatrice stepped into the boat.

“Did you ever hear anything like Airey’s roundabout phrase about a scheme of existence?” said Mr. Durdan.

“It is his way of putting a simple matter,” said Harold. “You heard of the man who, in order to soften down the fact that a girl had what are colloquially known as beetle-crushers, wrote that her feet tended to increase the mortality among coleoptera?”

“I’m afraid that the days of the present government are numbered,” said Mr. Durdan, who seemed to think that the remark was in logical sequence with Harold’s story.

Beatrice looked wonderingly at the speaker; it was some moments before she found an echo in the expression on Harold’s face to what she felt.

The man who could think of such things as the breaking up of a government, when floating in thirty fathoms of green sea, beneath the shadow of such cliffs as the boat was approaching, was a mystery to the girl, though she was the daughter of one of the nineteenth century historians, to whom nothing is a mystery.

The boat entered the great cave without a word being spoken by any one aboard, and in a few minutes it was being poled along in semi-darkness. The lapping of the swell from the entrance against the sides of the cave sounded on through the distance of the interior, and from those mysterious depths came strange sounds of splashing water, of dropping stalactites, and now and again a mighty sob of waves choked within a narrow vent.

Silently the boat was forced onward, and soon all light from the entrance was obscured. Through total darkness the little craft crept for nearly half a mile.

Suddenly a blaze of light shot up with startling effect in the bows of the boat. It only came from a candle that Brian had lit: but its gleam was reflected in millions of stalactites into what seemed an interminable distance—millions of stalactites on the roof and the walls, and millions of ripples beneath gave back the gleam, until the boat appeared to be the centre of a vast illumination.

The dark shadows of the men who were using the oars as poles, danced about the brilliant roof and floor of the cave, adding to the fantastic charm of the scene.

“Now,” said Brian, in a whisper, “these craythurs don’t understand anything that’s said to them unless by a human being, so we’ll need to be silent enough. We’ll be at the first ledge soon, and there maybe you’ll wait with the lady, Mr. Wynne—you’re heavier than Mr. Durdan, and every inch of water that the boat draws is worth thinking about. I’ll leave a candle with you, but not a word must you speak.”

“All right,” said Harold. “You’re the manager of the expedition; we must obey you; but I don’t exactly see where my share in the sport comes in.”

“I’d explain it all if I could trust myself to speak,” said Brian. “The craythurs has ears.” The ledge referred to by him was reached in silence. It was perhaps six inches above the water, and in an emergency it might have afforded standing room for three persons. So much Harold saw by the light of the candle that the boatman placed in a niche of rock four feet above the water.

At a sign from Brian, Harold got upon the ledge and helped Beatrice out of the boat.

The light of the candle that was in the bow of the boat gleamed upon the figure of a man naked from the waist up, and wearing a hard round hat with a candle fastened to the brim.

Harold knew that this was the costume of the seal-hunter of the Western caves, for he had had a talk with Brian on the subject, and had learned that only by swimming with a lighted candle on his forehead for a quarter of a mile, the hunter could reach the sealing ground at the termination of the cave.

Without a word being spoken, the boat went on, and its light soon glimmered mysteriously in the distance.

Harold and Beatrice stood side by side on the narrow ledge of rock and watched the dwindling of the light. The candle that was on the niche of rock almost beside them seemed dwindling also. It had become the merest spark. Harold saw that Brian had inadvertently placed it so that the dripping of the water from the roof sent flecks of damp upon the wick.

He stretched out his hand to shift it to another place, but before he could touch it, a large stalactite dropped upon it, and not only extinguished it, but sent it into the water with a splash.

The little cry that came from the girl as the blackness of darkness closed upon them, sounded to his ears as a reproach.

“I had not touched it,” said he. “Something dropped from the roof upon it. You don’t mind the darkness?”

“Oh, no—no,” said she, doubtfully. “But we were commanded to be dumb.”

“That command was given on the assumption that the candle would continue burning—now the conditions are changed,” said he, with a sophistry that would have done credit to a cabinet minister.

“Oh,” said she.

There was a considerable pause before she asked him how long he thought it would be before the boat would return.

He declined to bind himself to any expression of opinion on the subject.

Then there was another pause, filled up only by the splash of something falling from the roof—by the wash of the water against the smooth rock.

“I wonder how it has come about that I am given a chance of speaking to you at last?” said he.

“At last?” said she, repeating his words in the same tone of inquiry.

“I say at last, because I have been waiting for such an opportunity for some time, but it did not come. I don’t suppose I was clever enough to make my opportunity, but now it has come, thank God.”

Again there was silence. He seemed to think that he had said something requiring a reply from her, but she did not speak.

“I wonder if you would believe me when I say that I love you,” he remarked.

“Yes,” she replied, as naturally as though he had asked her what she thought of the weather. “Yes, I think I would believe you. If you did not love me—if I was not sure that you loved me, I should be the most miserable girl in all the world.”

“Great God!” he cried. “You do not mean to say that you love me, Beatrice?”

“If you could only see my face now, you would know it,” said she. “My eyes would tell you all—no, not all—that is in my heart.”

He caught her hands, after first grasping a few handfuls of clammy rock, for the hands of the truest lovers do not meet mechanically.

“I see them,” he whispered—“I see your eyes through the darkness. My love, my love!”

He did not kiss her. His soul revolted from the idea of the commonplace kiss in the friendly secrecy of the darkness.

There are opportunities and opportunities. He believed that if he had kissed her then she would never have forgiven him, and he was right. “What a fool I was!” he cried. “Two nights ago, when I overheard a man tell you, as I had told you long ago—so long ago—more than a week ago—that he did not want you to pass out of his sight—when I heard you make the same promise to him as you had made to me, I felt as if there was nothing left for me in the world. I went out into the darkness, and as I stood at the place when I first saw you, I thought that I should be doing well if I were to throw myself headlong down those rocks into the sea that the rain was beating upon. Beatrice, God only knows if it would be better or worse for you if I had thrown myself down—if I were to leave you standing alone here now.”

“Do not say those words—they are like the words I asked you before not to say. Even then your words meant everything to me. They mean everything to me still.”

He gave a little laugh. Triumph rang through it. He did not seem to think that his laughter might sound incongruous to her.

“This is my hour,” he said. “Whatever fate may have in store for me it cannot make me unlive this hour. And to think that I had got no idea that such an hour should ever come to me—that you should ever come to me, my beloved! But you came to me. You came to me when I had tried to bring myself to feel that there was something worth living for in the world apart from love.”

“And now?”

“And now—and now—now I know that there is nothing but love that is worth living for. What is your thought, Beatrice—tell me all that is in your heart?”

“All—all?” She now gave the same little laugh that he had given. She felt that her turn had come.

She gave just the same laugh when his feeling of triumph had given place to a very different feeling—when he had told her that he was a pauper—that he had no position in the world—that he was dependent upon his father for every penny that he had to spend, with the exception of a few hundred pounds a year, which he inherited from his mother—that it was an act of baseness on his part to tell her that he loved her.

He had plenty of time for telling her all this, and for explaining his position thoroughly, for nearly an hour had passed before a gleam of light and a hail from the furthest recesses of the cave, made them aware of the fact that other interests than theirs existed in the world.

And yet when he had told her all that he had to tell to his disadvantage, she gave that little laugh of triumph. He would have given a good deal to be able to see the expression which he knew was in those wonderful eyes of hers, as that laugh came from her.

Not being able to do so, however, he could only crush her hands against his lips and reply to the boat’s hail.

Brian, on hearing of the mishap to the candle, delivered a torrent of execration against himself. It took Harold some minutes to bring himself up to the point of Lord Innisfail’s enthusiasm on the subject of seal-fishing. Five excellent specimens were in the bottom of the boat, and the men who had swum after them were there also. A strong odour of whiskey was about them; and the general idea that prevailed was that they would not suffer from a chill, though they had been in the water for three quarters of an hour.

As the other boats only succeeded in capturing three seals among them all, Brian had statistics to bear out his contention that the presence of Beatrice had brought luck to his boat.

He pocketed two sovereigns which Harold handed him when the boats returned to the mooring-place, and he was more profuse than ever in his abuse of his own stupidity in placing the candle so as to be affected by the damp from the roof.

His eyes twinkled all the time in a way that made Harold’s cheeks red.

The judge found Miss Avon somewhat distraite after dinner that night. He became pensive in consequence. He wondered if she thought him elderly.

He did not mind in the least growing old, but the idea of being thought elderly was abhorrent to him.

The next day Beatrice and her father returned to their cottage at the other side of the lough.