CHAPTER XXIII

The first faint breath of the dawn—that sigh of light of which the air was scarcely conscious—made him aware as he walked along the sands of the fact that the beach was strewn with wreckage. He found himself examining a broken spar upon which he had struck his foot. Further on he stumbled over a hen-coop, and then again a fragment that looked like the cover of a hatchway.

He had heard nothing about a vessel's having come ashore during the tempest of the morning; but there was nothing remarkable in the sudden appearing of wreckage on this wild Cornish coast. Almost every tide washed up something that had once been part of a gallant ship. Wreckage came without anyone hearing of the wreck from which it had come. He examined the broken spar, and his fancy showed him the scene at the foundering of such a ship as the Gloriana, whose carcase had been so marvellously uncovered on the Sunday evening. He had had enough experience of seafaring to be able to picture the details of the wreckage of such a ship.

He left the beach and went on to the ascent of the higher part of the shore, thinking that it might be that when the dawn strengthened it might reveal the shape of some craft that had run ashore on the outer reef at this dangerous part of the coast; and even before he reached the elevated ground the dawn light had spread its faint gauze over the sea, and the shapes of the rocks were plain. He looked out carefully, scanning the whole coast, but he failed to see any wreck between the horns of the bay.

But when he had continued his slow walk for a few hundred yards he fancied that he saw some objects that looked dark against the pale sands. At first he thought that he was looking at a rock that had some resemblance to the form of a man; but a movement of a portion of the object showed that it was indeed a man who was standing there.

Wesley had no mind for a companion on this stroll of his, so he went a short way inland in order to save himself from being seen, and he did not return to the sandy edge of the high ground until he judged that he had gone beyond the spot where he had seen the man. Turning about, he found that he had done what he intended: he saw the dark figure walking from where he had been, in the direction of the sea.

But by this time the light had so increased that he was able to see that the man was walking away from the body of another that was lying on the beach.

He had scarcely noticed this before the man stopped, looked back, and slowly returned to the body. But the moment he reached it Wesley was amazed to see him throw up his arms as if in surprise and then fling himself down on the body with his hands upon its throat.

Wesley knew nothing except that the man's attitude was that of one who was trying to strangle another. But this was surely enough. He shouted out and rushed toward the place with a menace.

The man was startled; his head went back with a jerk, but his hands did not leave the other's throat. Wesley had to drag him back by the collar, and even then he did not relax his hold until the body had been lifted up into a sitting position. The moment the man's fingers were loosed the head fell back upon the sand.

Wesley threw himself between the two, and the instant that he turned upon the assailant he recognised John Bennet.

“Wretch!” he cried, “what is it that you would do? What is it that you have done—murderer?”

Bennet stared at him as if stupefied. Then he burst into a laugh, but stopped himself suddenly.

“Mr. Wesley, is it?” he cried. “Oh, sir, is't you indeed that pulls my hands off his throat? There is something for the Devil to laugh at in that.”

“Man, if you be a man and not a fiend, would you strangle one whom the sea has already drowned?” cried Wesley.

“I have the right,” shouted Bennet, “for he would be dead by now if I had not succoured him.”

“If it be true that you saved him from an imminent death, at that time, wherefore should you strive to murder him now?” said Wesley.

“I did not see his face then—it was dark when I stumbled on him. Only when I turned about when the dawn broke I saw who he was. Go your ways, Mr. Wesley. The man is mine by every law of fair play. Stand not between us, sir, or you shall suffer for it.”

“Monster, think you that I shall obey you while a breath remains in my body? I shall withstand you to the death, John Bennet; you shall have two murders laid at your door instead of one.”

The man laughed as before. Then he said:

“That is the point where the devils begin to laugh—ho! ho! John Wesley!”

“I have heard one of them,” said Wesley.

“Oh, you fool, to stay my hand! Know you not that the man lying there is none other than he whom Nelly Polwhele has promised to marry?”

“And is not that a sufficient reason why you should do your best to save him—not take his life away?”

For more than a minute the man was too astonished to speak. At last he said:

“Is it that you are mad, John Wesley? Heard you not what I said?”

“Every word,” replied Wesley.

“You cannot have taken in my words,” the other whispered. “Think, sir, that is the foolish thing that stands between you and her—you love her—I have seen that.”

“And I stand between you and him—that is enough for the present moment,” said Wesley quickly, facing the man, whom he noticed sidling round ready to leap upon the body lying on the beach.

Bennet saw that his cunning was overmatched. “Fool! I cry again,” he said in a low tone. “Would not I slay a score such as you and he for her sake? A man's soul can only be lost once, and I am ready to go to perdition for her—I have counted the cost. The best of the bargain is with me! Out of my way, sir—out of my way!”

He took a few steps back, preparing to rush at the other. Wesley kept his eyes upon him and stood with his feet firmly planted to stand against his violence. But before the man could make his rush there was sudden flash of light in his face, dazzling him and Wesley as well. The light shifted.

Wesley turned to see whence it came. There was the sound of a hard boot on the pebbles and a man's voice said:

“Avast there! Don't move a hand. I have a pistol covering ye, and a cutlash is in my belt.”

“You have come in good time, whoever you be,” said Wesley. “But you will have no need to use your weapons, sir.”

“Ay, ay, but if there's a move between ye, my gentlemen, I'll make spindrift o' your brains. Ye hear?” was the response.

The man, who had flashed his lantern upon them—the dawn was still very faint—came beside them and showed that he had not made an empty boast. Wesley perceived that he was one of the Preventive men, fully armed.

He kept the blaze of his lantern on Bennet's face and then turned it on Wesley, whom he appeared to recognise.

“In Heaven's name, sir, what's this?” he cried.

“Take no thought for us,” said Wesley. “Here lies a poor wretch washed ashore. Give me your help to bring back life to him. No moment must be lost—the loss of a minute may mean the loss of his life.”

He was already kneeling beside the prostrate figure. The Preventive man followed his example. They both exclaimed in one voice:

“He is alive!”

“God be thanked,” said Wesley solemnly. “I feared——”

“You have treated him with skill, sir,” said the man. “You did not give him a dram?”

“I have only been here a few minutes; the saving; of him from drowning is not due to me,” said Wesley.

The man had his ration of rum in his knapsack, and was administering it, Bennet standing by without a word.

“We must get help to carry him to the nearest house,” said the Preventive man.

“I shall hasten to the village,” said Wesley. But he suddenly checked himself. He knew that Ben-net's cunning would be equal to such a device as to get rid of the revenue officer for the few minutes necessary to crush the life out of the man on the sand. “No, on second thought yonder man—his name is Bennet—will do this duty. John Bennet, you will hasten to the nearest house—any house save Polwhele's—and return with at least two of the fishermen. They will come hither with two oars and a small sail—enough sailcloth to make into a hammock for the bearing of the man with ease. You will do my bidding.”

“I will do your bidding,” said Bennet after a pause, and forthwith he hurried away.

“What is all this, sir?” asked the man in a low tone when he had gone. “I heard your voice and his—he is half a madman—they had the sound of a quarrel.”

“You arrived in good time, friend,” said Wesley. “You say this man was treated with skill in his emergency; if so, it must be placed to the credit of John Bennet. I can say so much, but no more.”

“I'll ask no more from you, sir,” said the other, slowly and suspiciously. “But if I heard of Ben-net's murdering a man I would believe it sooner than any tale of his succouring one. He is a bit loose in the hatches, as the saying is; I doubt if he will bear your message, sir.”

“I shall make this sure by going myself,” said

Wesley. “I am of no help here; you have dealt with the half drowned before now.”

“A score of times—and another score to the back of the first,” said the man. “I tell you this one is well on the mend. But a warm blanket will be more to him than an anker of Jamaica rum. You do well to follow Bennet. Would the loan of a pistol be of any confidence to you in the job?”

“There will be no heed for such now, even if I knew how to use one,” said Wesley.

He perceived that the man had his suspicions. He hurried away when he had reached the track above the shingle.

It was quite light before he reached the nearest cottage, which stood about a hundred yards east of the Port Street, and belonged to a fisherman and boatwright named Garvice. The men and his sons had their tar-pot on the brazier and had already begun work on a dinghy which lay keel uppermost before them.

They looked with surprise at him when he asked if they had been long at work.

“On'y a matter o' quartern hour,” replied the old man.

“Then you must have seen John Bennet and got his message?” said Wesley.

“Seen John Bennet? Ay, ay—still mad. Message? No message i' the world. What message 'ud a hare-brainer like to 'un bear to folk wi' the five senses o' Golmighty complete?” the old man enquired.

“Do you tell me that Bennet said naught to you about a half-drowned man needing your help?” asked Wesley.

“No word. Even if so rigid a madman ha' carried that tale think ye we'd be here the now?”

“'Tis as well that I came, though I thought it cruel to distrust him,” said Wesley.

He then told the man what was needed, and before he had spoken a dozen words the old man had thrown down his tar-brush and was signalling his sons to run down one of the boats to the water.

“Paddle round in half the time takes t' walk,” he said. “No back breakin', no bone shakin 's my morter. Down she goes.”

Wesley was glad to accept a seat in the stern sheets of the small boat which was run down to the water, not twenty yards from the building shed; and when he returned with the three boatmen to that part of the coast from which he had walked, he found the man to whose aid he had come sitting up and able to say a word or two to the revenue man, who was kneeling beside him, having just taken his empty rum bottle from his mouth.

Old Garvice looked as if he felt that he had been brought from his work under false pretences. He plodded slowly across the intervening piece of beach a long way behind Mr. Wesley, and the Preventive man had reported the progress to recovery made by the other before the Garvice family had come up. The Garvices had had more than a nodding acquaintance with the revenue authorities before this morning.

“John Bennet is a bigger rascal than I thought, and that's going far,” said the Preventive man when Wesley told him that no message had been given at the Port. “If I come face to face with him, them that's nigh will see some blood-letting. Why, e'en Ned Garvice, that I've been trying to lay a trap for this twelve year, lets bygones be bygones when there's a foundered man to succour.”

“Where is 'un?” enquired the old man with pointed satire, looking round with a blank face.

The bedraggled man sitting on the beach was able to smile.

“Wish I'd had the head to bid you ask Neddy Garvice to carry hither a bottle of his French brandy—ay, the lot that you run ashore when the cutter fouled on the bank,” said the Preventive man.

“Oh, that lot? Had I got a billet from you, Freddy Wise, I'd ha' put a stoup from the kegs o' the Gorgon into my pocket,” said the old man wickedly. Mr. Wesley did not know that the Gorgon was a large ship that had come ashore the previous year, and had been stripped bare by the wreckers. “Oh, ay; the Gorgon for brandy and the Burglarmaster for schnapps, says I, and I sticks to that object o' creed, Freddy, whatsoe'er you says.” The Bourghermeister was the name of another wreck whose stores the revenue men had been too slow to save some years before.

But while these pleasantries were being exchanged between the men Wesley was looking at the one in whose interests he was most concerned. He was lying with his head supported by a crag on which Fred Wise had spread his boat cloak. His face was frightfully pallid, and his forehead was like wax, only across his temple there was a long ugly gash, around which the blood had coagulated. His eyes were closed except at intervals when he started, and they opened suddenly and began to stare rather wildly. His arms hung down and his hands were lying limp on the beach palms up, suggesting the helplessness of a dead man. He was clearly a large and strongly built fellow, who could sail a ship and manage a crew, using his head as well as his hands.

The others were looking at him critically; he was so far recovered that they did not seem to think there was any imperative need for haste in the matter of carrying him to a bed; although they criticised him as if he were dead.

“Worser lads ha' gone down and heard of for nevermore,” said the old fisherman. “Did he know that Squire Trevelyan buries free of all duty all such as the sea washes up 'tween tides? That's the Vantage to be drowned on these shores; but the Squire keeps that knowledge like a solemn secret; fears there'd be a rush—they'd be jammin' one t'other amongst crags as for who'd come foremost to his own funeral.”

“Tis no secret o' gravity, Ned Garvice, that you give orders to your boys to carry you down in the cool o' the evening when you feel your hour's at hand, and lay ye out trim and tidy for the flood-tide, so that ye get a free funeral, and Parson Rodney's 'Earth t' earth' thrown into the bargain,” said Wise.

“I've learned my sons to honour their father, and it puts 'un back a long way in their 'struction to be face to face wi' 'un as has a hardened scoff for his grey hairs,” said the fisherman. “Go your ways, lads, and gather limpits so ye hear not evil words that shake your faith in your ancient father. But what I can't see is how he got them finger-marks on his neck.”

He pointed to the man on the beach.

“They ha' the aspect o' finger marks, now ha' they not, sir?” said Wise meaningly, turning to Wesley.

“My thought, friends, amounts to this: I have heard that in cases of rescue from drowning quickness is most needful for the complete restoration of the sufferer,” said Wesley. “Now, sirs, I ask you is this the moment for light gossip, when yonder poor fellow lies as if he had not an hour's life in his body?”

“There's summat i' that, too,” said old Garvice, as if a matter which he had been discussing had suddenly been presented to him in an entirely new light.

“Oh, sir,” said the Preventive man, “when a corpse has revived so far 'tis thought best that he should have a short rest; it kind o' way knits the body and soul together all the closer. The man is in no danger now, I firmly believe; but, as you say, there's no need for wasting any more time. Give us a heave under his other armpit, my lad. Heave handsomely; there's naught but a thin halfhour 'twixt him and eternity—mind that, and you won't jerk. Who's for his heels?”

The elder of Garvice's sons—a big lad of twenty—obeyed the instructions of the revenue man, and Wesley and the old fisherman went to the feet.

“'Vast hauling! Set me up on end,” said the man over whom they were bending. He spoke in a low voice and weak; he did not seem to have sufficient breath to make himself heard.

“Hear that?” said the fisherman with a sagacious wink. “There's the lightsome and blithe quarter-deck voice o' your master-mariner when warping into dock and his missus a-waitin' for 'un rosy as silk on the pier-head.'Tis then that if so be that a man's genteel, it will out.”

“'Vast jaw, my hearty!” murmured the man wearily.

“That's the tone that fills the air wi' th' smell o' salt beef for me whene'er I hears 'un—ay, sirs, salt beef more lifelike and lively than this high ship-master who I trow hath ofttimes watched a ration toddle round the cuddy table like to a guileless infant.”

“Heave all, with a will!” cried Wise, and the four men raised the other as tenderly as a bulk so considerable could be taken off the ground, and bore him with some staggering and heavy breathing, down to where the youngest of the Garvice family was keeping the dinghy afloat over the rapidly shallowing sand.

An hour later, when the day was still young, Wesley was kneeling by his bedside giving thanks to Heaven for having allowed him to participate in the privilege of saving a fellow-creature from death.