Part 8

There was no reason at all for this conviction except that Reube had not come back to tea, yet Pamela was convinced it was exactly as she pictured. She sat on for a few minutes thinking. She did not want to give up her plan at all. It was, in fact, a blow--then the danger of going down the Beak was considerable. Pam reviewed the idea of going to Bell Bay and trying to find a man. There was Major Fraser--he would have gone, but he was still lame. Adrian would have gone, but he was on the sea.

Suddenly she remembered that the first duty of a Girl Guide was to help anyone in distress, danger unconsidered. "Little Friend of all the World" was the very pith of the whole matter, "Be prepared" the motto, and secret sign.

Most surely there was only one thing to be done and that was to go and see, and take immediate action if necessary.

As she came to this conclusion, she straightened her shoulders and sat upright. She had been leaning forward with elbows on knees, chin in hands. And, as she moved, she heard a noise close by, and looked round.

By the roadside, a little farther down, was an open-front cart-shed, the sort that has a rickety roof on plank walls and shelters not only carts, but farm machines of various kinds. Pamela got up and walked a yard or two down to look. It might of course be "young Reube" hiding, which would clear her difficulties at once. There was no one in the shed. She went round the side to the back, called softly, "Reuben--Reuben--come out, I want to tell you something." She knew he would come if he were there. No answer, but a hen walked slowly out from the bushes clucking.

"Oh, you idiot!" said Pamela, annoyed. It must have been the hen. She walked slowly back to her basket, picked it up, and went off the way she had come.

*CHAPTER IX*

*The Strange Adventure of the Curlew's Call*

Pamela went back steadily the way she had come, and reached the branching of the road with a full appreciation of the work she had set herself to do--supposing that "curlew" cry should be the desperate appeal of poor little Reuben.

The fog was thicker, she could but just see the water at the cliff foot; sometimes not that, because the mist shifted in patches--unequal patches. She sat down to listen, feeling as though she could hear better so. Her only guide would be the cry. Of course her return had caused a perfect bedlam of dismay among the birds, so she had to wait till they were reassured; then, when all was still except the everlasting wash of the water on the rocks, she heard the one wail again.

Listening for it with a new idea in her mind, she wondered that she had ever been deceived into thinking it was a curlew. She tried to place it, and the stillness of the atmosphere helped her. A little to the south of the central point, and down--certainly down.

If Mrs. Romilly could have seen her daughter at that moment she might have been excused for a nervous collapse. Pamela looked about for a safe place in which to dispose of the egg basket, finally planting it between two sturdy tussocks of coarse grass and heather. Then she pulled her little close hat tighter down, shifting the holding pin; looked to her shoe ties; and started onward slowly down the preliminary incline. There was no edge to drop over, instead, a very deceptive slope, that grew steeper and steeper until it became dangerous.

She fully realized what the child had done, and how he had been led astray by the apparent easiness of the first part. Probably some idea of birds' eggs had drawn him on--though it was too late in the season--or it might have been simply adventure. Pamela thought about it as she went on, and wondered why he stayed where he was instead of coming back. It was likely that he had hurt himself.

One of the dangers of this business was starting too fast. In some ways a cliff edge to get over would be less of a snare, because you went over with the full knowledge of your risks.

When she looked back, after perhaps five minutes of cautious descent, it was astonishing to note how a "cliff" had risen up behind her. She seemed to be a long way down, and the height at her back looked amazingly steep too. The time was near when she would have to take to her hands and knees, and crawl--then after a while she would be letting herself down by rock points, strong grass, and the rugged, uneven surface of the real cliff--but there were cracks, and little gullies made by rain and softer soil; these would help.

Every now and then she waited, listening intently, but there was a longish pause in the crying. It occurred to her that she might get an answer by calling--and moreover set at rest any lingering doubt. She called:

"Reuben, Reube, Reube--where are you?" Her voice was clear and pretty, a sweet voice, the sound of it comforting in a way.

Quickly came an answer on a different note to the despairing wail of the earlier call.

"Here--Miss----"

The question was very surely decided. Reuben knew who it was by the politeness of the "miss"--even in extremity. He recognized Pamela's voice. But the "here", was rather baffling! Where was "here"? She would have to find out, and anyway she knew it was Reuben, that was all that mattered much. Pamela started on down once more. Down, and along at the same time, partly because the call suggested it as the right direction, partly because it was easier.

She had to cross a most horrible slope of burned grass--very steep, yet smooth. It gave her some uncommonly ugly moments, but she forced herself not to look down, and on no account to increase her speed. She went by inches, digging her toes and fingers in and resolutely thinking of Reuben and the business in hand--not of possibilities.

"After this comes a nice broken-up bit," she said aloud, to keep herself sensible, "when I go up again, I'll try farther along. These slippery bits are no use."

Having reached the nice broken-up bit aforesaid, she cautiously turned over, and sitting on a big tufty ledge, looked about her.

A little smile flickered round her mouth.

"One in the eye for Addie," she said, "he declared I couldn't get up or down the Beak; and it's worse in a mist."

The mist was distinctly thick now. So much so that the top of the headland was out of sight, and the sea was invisible. She was like a very lonely bird in the middle of an ocean of drifting film. Probably this was what the eagles felt like--high, high up on a rocky peak in the clouds. She was not nervous--it was all so very exciting--but it was important to locate the lost one as soon as possible, because time was going rather fast.

"Hullo, Reube, call again!" cried Pamela.

There was no answer--there had been no cry, she thought, since the "miss" in the beginning. She waited a moment and then tried again. "Reube--I'm close by--I'm come to help you--where are you?"

All the birds started to shriek and scream with delirious riot. They rose in a cloud, and circled round and round. It was maddening.

"Oh you silly idiots," said Pamela.

As the clatter died down into isolated screams, she heard a voice say:

"I bean't afeard o' birds, Miss."

"That's right, Reube," she spoke in a hearty manner, because the words came in a detached weak tone, as though the speaker made an effort to say them.

He must be quite close, she thought.

Down she went again, with infinite care, because the surface of everything was greasy with mist that thickened continually. Down and down, and ever the mutter and wash of waves on rock grew more distinct.

Then the voice called, with more life in it.

"Here, Miss! You do be going too far."

Pamela checked and looked round eagerly. _Above_ her, but more to the Ramsworthy side, in the loneliest and most inaccessible bit of the Beak, was a dark heap, a very little heap; and, small as it was, the great part of it consisted of a hump of coarse grass. On the ledge where this grew clung the human part of the heap.

"_I_ see you," said Pamela, in a cheerful tone.

It was an heroic effort on her part, for, looking at the whole situation, up, down, and round, it was distinctly terrifying. After nearly ten minutes cautious climbing, she came within arm's length of the child.

He was lying on his face, arms grasping a snag of rock at the back of the grass bunch. He had never looked so small to Pamela, and, in an instant, she saw by his face what he had suffered; it was pinched and drawn--stained with tears and dirt.

She laughed. Not because she felt like laughter, but because she had neither water nor food, and something must be done to rouse the failing courage--_if_ they were to get up the fog-shielded height that towered above them.

"I was mortal glad--when I heard you," volunteered Reube, gazing at her with sunken eyes: "I was pretty near asleep."

"Not at all a nice place for a doze;" said Pam, "now what on earth made you come here, young man?"

Reube said: "I dunno, Miss." He did not, of course. He had just started climbing down in a spirit of adventure, and found himself forced to go on in order to find a way up again. Here was the difficulty. Pamela saw that it would not be possible to go straight up from here. A cold thrill of dismay ran through her veins. They _must_ move--they must start moving at once, there was no time to be lost. And she must find out the way of least resistance, so to speak; that way only could she get on with the exhausted child. And she could not see!

The mist dazzled her, wetting every grass blade with a glitter of tiny shining powder. She would have to move upward, even though difficulties forced her to go along the cliff face also. That was all that seemed perfectly clear. Also, and first of all, there was the condition of Reube.

He remained passive, his white face resting on his arm, his hands gripping the grass tussock. There seemed no sort of spring in him, and Pamela looked uneasily at his closed eyes. She realized that he was injured as well as exhausted, and said:

"What's the matter, Reube--where are you hurt?" in very gentle tones.

Reube opened his eyes and tried to pull his scattered wits together.

"It's me leg, Miss--and I'm that _dry_----" he ceased.

Pamela felt acutely that water was impossible. Then an idea occurred to her--very inadequate, but still something. She spread her handkerchief on the grass--saw that it began to get damp at once--and so left it for a minute, weighted with a little lump of soil, while she looked at the leg.

The obvious injury was a swollen and bruised knee, very blue, and growing bluer. But what she feared more was the appearance of the ankle. The child was wearing rather clumsy laced boots, too large for him, probably his brother's boots. It was probable that the boot had twisted, wrenching the ankle. Pamela hoped that it was only a bad sprain--not a break or a dislocation, but she did not know. The foot certainly looked queer. She wondered if she ought to take the boot off. But the laces were knotted in more than one place, and a terror of interfering seized her.

"If only I knew first aid," she thought miserably.

The moment she got a chance she would learn the whole thing. Therein lay another immense advantage of being a real Guide. She would have known exactly what to do. But ignorant handling might make things very much worse. She moved the foot cautiously, Reube shrank and winced.

She was sure it looked all wrong. Suppose it was broken--what awful pain!

Pamela returned to examination of her handkerchief. It was quite wet--really wet. She pressed it between the child's lips, feeling hopeful.

"Suck it, Reube," she said, "it isn't much, but it might make you feel a wee bit better."

Then she remembered that soldiers sucked pebbles when they were very hard put to it from thirst in front-line trenches. She considered the advisability of giving Reube a wet pebble to suck--if she could find one--there seemed to be none in the least suitable. After all, suppose Reube swallowed the pebble in a moment of half consciousness! That would be worse than anything. She returned to a very settled conviction that _the_ important thing in life was to know first aid, and belong to the Girl Guides, when you would be armed with practical knowledge of what to do in all circumstances.

Reuben seemed the least bit revived. Whether it was the result of her company or of the handkerchief one could not tell, but the time seemed to have come to make a real start, if they were ever to get up the mist-veiled height above them.

From then on--for possibly twenty minutes, when she was completely played out--poor Pam remembered afterwards as a nightmare of the worst kind.

She started by climbing up two feet, and then grasping Reube by the arm, pulled him up to her. She urged him to use his sound foot, and just drag the other. The slowness of the process was exasperating; the difficulty grew and grew, because the climb was steeper and more slippery. She persevered, Reube made heroic efforts--but at the end of fifteen to twenty minutes, he lay a dead weight.

He had fainted.

Pamela felt pretty desperate. They had come up some distance, but much of the time had been spent in going a long round, that was bound to be, because she was forced to pick the best foothold. Not much useful progress had been made, and what now? She could not revive the child. He might even be dead!

Pamela spoke aloud to herself.

"Well, dead or alive, I've got to get him up;" her teeth were set in this determination.

After resting for a few minutes she took sure footing, tested her position, and then, putting an arm around Reube's waist, heaved up the small body to a place perhaps a foot higher. This process she repeated six times. She had gained perhaps eight feet, but she was very tired. The child remained inert, with closed eyes.

Pamela rested again. This time her lips trembled just a little, and she blinked her eyes as she stared fixedly along that awful slope. It was so fearfully steep, and the foothold more and more slippery. If only someone would come! She had not called, because she knew there was no one about on the top of the cliff, and it seemed waste of breath and strength. She understood the curious stolidity of villagers. Supposing anyone passed along the road at the top he would take no notice of cries--probably would not hear.

Had there been no fog, Addie might have seen her and climbed up. Surely the yawl must be somewhere below, cut off from vision by that mass of elusive shifting whiteness. Then she remembered that there was also a calm, a dead breathless calm. Perhaps the yacht had not passed Heggadon, and might have to go back to Salterne when the tide turned.

Everything was against her, and against being found, because all the attention would be for the yawl and not for herself; it would be taken for granted she was safe on land. She remembered that the Floweret would certainly have said: "Where _can_ dear Pamela have gone to! Surely she is very late." That might have drawn people's attention, but even the Floweret was lost to her now. There was positively no hope of help. Reuben's life, and her own too, for that matter, depended on her own unaided efforts.

She took a long breath, thought of all sorts of things in a queer rush of resolution to do what hundreds--thousands--of brave men and women had done in the fighting years. After all this adventure was not unlike getting a wounded comrade into safety from the lonely perils of No Man's Land. If a wounded man could do it for another one worse wounded--surely she, who was sound, could do it for this little creature.

That was about the reasoning of her mind if it were analysed--but, of course, it all passed like a flash of realization, she did not reason. Then she began again, and had gone up in the same way another five feet, hardly more, when a sick feeling of fright seemed to choke her--she could not get higher. She had come to a place that was so steep as to be practically a wall. It was like that for some ten feet, after which it looked easier--but just here it was sheer. She must try and get round it, as it were--shift herself and the boy along. To that end it would be better to explore alone first--find out where her best road lay and come back for Reube? The question was dare she leave him, would he move if he returned to consciousness, and roll down into the sea.

She was considering her position, when she heard a call--actually a human call.

A wave of passionate thankfulness swept over her--nearly as possible she burst out crying from sheer relief. Who--who could it be?

Then she saw.

Rather above, and a good deal to her left, was a figure making towards them in a swift and capable manner.

Pamela was just going to answer with a cry of welcome, when a sense of dazed confusion checked her, and for several moments she remained just staring with an uneasy suspicion that she might have "gone off her head" from the strain.

For the person coming down towards her was the double of herself. No less, apparently.

Pamela looked away--shut her eyes, opened them and stared down at the sea, moving everlastingly through the shifting haze of the white fog. Everything was the same. Reube was still unconscious. She glanced at the poor foot, it still seemed the wrong way round. Then she looked back at the girl, and saw--certainly herself--to all appearance.

A tall slim creature in a blue serge skirt, tan stockings, tan shoes, a Japanese silk blouse, and chamois leather gauntlet gloves. It was almost a relief to realize that she wore a dark knitted tam-o'-shanter--which Pam was not wearing that day, though she often wore one. Over the shoulder of this double hung a thick plait of lovely bright hair. Pamela glanced down at her own plait to compare them, and her sudden thought was--

"Hers is lighter."

Pausing at a distance of some yards, the stranger stared hard at Pamela, and Pamela was so absorbed in staring at her in return that she nearly slid down the Beak into the sea.

"What is the matter?"

That was the first thing the double asked, and her voice was a little unexpected. It was rather deep, and she spoke slowly--carefully--with the least touch of something different in the accent.

Pamela cleared her throat; she felt nervous, she felt the least bit as though nothing were real.

"It's little Reube Ensor," she said, "he's hurt."

"Reube Ensor!" repeated the other girl with care, "how did he come upon this cliff?"

"He's only six. He got away from the other children coming from school. I suppose he wanted to climb. Anyway, he's hurt his foot awfully. I've been trying to get him up for ages, but it's appallingly difficult, because he's fainted and he can't do a thing for himself, you see."

She rushed the words with a sort of friendliness, yet all the while she was quite absorbed in the girl and hardly knew what it was she said.

"I shall help you," said the stranger; and came along in an active, sure-footed way, glancing about as she came.

Pamela crossed over Reube's small body to the right side, to make room for the other girl who, kneeling, looked at him, at his leg and foot--Pamela meanwhile looking at her.

"This is the boy of the farm on this hill," said the girl, and raised her eyes, meeting Pamela's. They stared straight at each other, and the original Pam--so to speak--was conscious rather thankfully that this interloping "Pam" was not like her in the face.

She was handsomer. She was very handsome, but she had not Pamela's elusive charm and daintiness of outline.

Her skin was fair and untanned; but her eyes were dark, long shaped, and of a red-brown colour, with dark lashes; her eyebrows were long and cleanly pencilled, set rather high above her eyes. Her nose was the least bit aquiline, and she had those cut-upward nostrils that give a curiously disdainful air; it was a beautiful nose. Her mouth was beautiful too, very well shaped, but with rather thin lips, and her chin was round and full.

She was certainly a very handsome girl, especially if you added her hair to the catalogue. It was golden--shades lighter than Pam's--a real bright gold colour, thick and long.

She sat down sideways--all her attitudes were graceful, like Pamela's.

"Why did you come for him?" she asked, making a sign towards Reube.

"Why did you come after me?" retorted Pamela; she _felt_ instinctively something the least bit supercilious in the look and manner of the other.

"I was near the shed where carts are put, and I saw you. I have seen you before, and I wished to know----" she paused, then went on, skipping what she "wished to know", "I saw you put your basket on the cliff and go down. So I waited to know why you climbed in such bad weather. After a while I came after you to see what happened. If you had called I should have come more quickly."

Pamela in return told why she had come back. She related what Mrs. Ensor had said. "When I got to that cart-shed, it rushed over me all in one instant that the crying sea-gull was Reube. I _had_ to come back. Don't you have those sort of convictions sometimes--you know--when there's no earthly sense in a thing yet you're perfectly sure it must be."

The other girl shook her head.

"Oh no. I don't feel like that," she said, "I do what I choose, when I wish to do it, that's all."

Then she glanced up at the cliff just above them and went on with decision.

"We cannot take him by that way. It is less steep the path I came down. We must go along--then up. See, now, he is very small and light, we can carry him between us, it will be easy for two."

*CHAPTER X*

*Life or Death on the Beak Cliff*

Afterwards, Pamela found she had rather an indistinct recollection of that journey to the cliff top. One thing was certain, she could not have done it without the help of her double. They carried Reube in a sort of sling made by their own cotton petticoats. It was the strange girl's notion, and proved quite practical. Each girl wore a petticoat. One supported the boy's head and shoulders, and one his legs--any other method would have been impossible, because of the injured foot, that is to say, without causing terrible pain to Reuben.

He came to himself while he was being trussed into this amateur sling, and stared at the new girl with such interest that Pamela felt it was as good as "burnt feathers" for curing faintness.

"Hullo, Reube," she said, laughing, "now we shan't be long--shall we?"

"No, Miss," agreed Reube in a weak voice.

"Hold on this," ordered the stranger.

"Yes, Miss, I'll 'old to it," he gazed from one girl to the other with interest.

That was the beginning. The end was on the top resting near the egg basket--with Reube like a mummy flat on the grass, and the pair of girls taking breath.

"I'm awfully obliged to you," said Pamela, "really grateful beyond words. I should have had to stay there all night."

"All night, why?" asked the other, turning her head to look curiously at the speaker. In that moment Pam found herself wondering if the girl was really as supercilious as she looked--or whether the expression was caused by her disdainful eyebrows.

"Why! But you wouldn't leave a person like that, would you?" Pamela opened her big, grey-blue eyes as she answered with this question.

"Oh, yes. If it seemed to be the most sensible thing to do. I should put him in the safest place possible--then I would go and find help."

"He would have fallen down," said Pamela decidedly, "he wasn't conscious, and he couldn't hold on. One daren't be responsible for leaving him."

The other girl shrugged her shoulders slightly.

"Oh, well--where is the sense to kill two people instead of one? You are the most important."