CHAPTER XLI

THE WHITE CLIFF

In the dead of night, Jane Marley came to the side of her daughter's bed, and asked: 'Why are you tossing so unceasingly?'

'I cannot sleep.'

'What disturbs you?'

'O mother! I have done wrong. I was desirous of procuring a pair of choughs. No one would trouble himself, and risk his neck to get them for me but Jack Rattenbury, and he will go over the White Cliff in search for them. If anything were to happen to him――――' she choked.

'Nothing will happen to him,' said her mother. 'Compose yourself. _He_ would not risk himself for either of us. He hates us too heartily. He probably knows where are some birds easily reached, or he is fooling you with a promise to do that which he has no intention of performing. He will run into no danger on _our_ account, be certain of that.'

Somewhat relieved in mind, Winefred lay quieter. There was reason in her mother's words. She herself would adventure nothing for Jack, and why should he run into danger on her account?

Nevertheless she was not wholly reassured, and rising before daybreak unperceived by her mother, she went down to the ferry, crossed with a couple of women bound for Seaton with eggs, and made her way to the White Cliff along the beach; then, turning up a cleft at the junction of the chalk and the red sandstone, she ascended to the summit, which rises four hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea, not perpendicularly, but so as to overhang.

A haze covered the water, and the bald white crag stood up as a horn of the moon issuing from the clouds.

Winefred was out of breath from the ascent, which was steep, and a catch came in her throat when she saw three figures, of which one was Jack, by an old thornbush that grew close to the edge.

As she had walked along the shore she had used the opportunity to observe the face of the crag more attentively than she had ever done before, and she had seen how that it had been gnawed into by the sea-winds till it resembled a piece of old Stilton cheese of which little save the rind is firm, and how difficult and perilous it would be for any one to attempt to reach the recesses and ledges where the birds harboured. To ascend from the beach would be a sheer impossibility; moreover, the places employed by the sea-birds for breeding were all near the summit, and were protected by the beetling brows of that summit.

With quivering lip, Winefred went to the three young men she saw before her, and singling out Jack, said roughly, 'It is nonsense――I do not want the choughs.'

'You offered a guinea for them,' he replied.

'Take the guinea. I do not choose to endanger any one's life. I had not noticed before how the brow overhangs. I will not have the choughs.'

'I am satisfied that they are possible to be got,' said he; 'I can but try.'

'I will not have you try.'

'You held me to my promise.'

'I hold you no more. I withdraw everything I said. But you shall have the guinea.'

'I do not want your guinea. I shall go after the birds all the same.'

'I beg you will not go.'

He smiled.

'I,' said he, 'am obstinate, as was my father. It is in our blood. When I have undertaken to do a thing, I do it.'

'You will not, when I beseech you to desist.'

'Yes. I shall get the choughs if they are to be had.'

She was silent. She saw that it was in vain to use further entreaty, and yet her alarm was great. Her bosom heaved.

'We are not friends,' she said at last. 'We have been enemies. Perhaps for that very reason I do not relish that your death should be due to any fancies of mine.'

'I am not dead yet, nor have I got the choughs.'

She stooped; there was at her feet moss that was studded with dewdrops, and with it she wiped her hands. 'I am clear of it. I have entreated you not to venture on this mad expedition. If you go on now, it is due to your own wilfulness. I am guiltless.'

'You will not be held responsible,' said Jack. Then turning to his companions, 'Now, mates, slew the cable about the thorn, and mind that it runs over the roller.'

He indicated a piece of beechwood on the cliff-edge. The rope by which he was to be suspended was to cross this, so as not to fret on the edge of the cliff. This also would allow him, when climbing up or descending, to get his fingers under the cord. Without this contrivance they would be torn to the bone.

Winefred stood aside panting. She had been heated by climbing, but now she turned cold; all her nerves tingled as though she had been whipped with nettles.

'You must have a rope round your waist, Jack,' said one of the lads.

'No, thank you, it would encumber me. I must be free. It is not so bad. I shall not swing but cling to the rocks and work myself down and along with my hands. I shall sit astride on the pole and have a crook to help me along.'

Words of renewed entreaty to desist rose to Winefred's lips, but she could not speak them, and she knew that further remonstrance was profitless. Jack threw a bag across his shoulder, and bound it about his waist.

He stepped to the edge, cast himself flat on the turf and looked over. The end of the rope, attached to the middle of a short pole, swung in space.

'All right, lads,' said he, and slipped over the verge.

Winefred's heart rose, and her head swam, as she saw him disappear. As he went, he looked at her and smiled.

Should the rope give way, should he lose his balance on the crosspole, there was for him a sheer fall of over four hundred feet.

Below were broken masses of rock, fallen from above, about which the sea chafed and frothed, and among which it burrowed.

The cable was strong; it was passed twice round the trunk of the thorn, and was held fast by two lusty youths, who paid out gradually, as required. One of them, turning his head over his shoulder, said to the girl, 'Go below, missie, and see how he manages.'

She made no reply, but turned to obey. Her knees trembled under her, and she was sick at heart. As she descended, tears came coursing down her cheeks. Tears of vexation and of alarm. How would she feel ever after should an accident occur? The wiping her hands with dew could not brush away responsibility. Jack would not have ventured his life had she not urged him to it.

When she had reached the shore she looked up.

The White Cliff is composed of a cap of chalk, a hundred feet thick, striated with beds of flint, and this rests on a series of shelving cherty sandstone beds of a tawny hue. The inclination of these gives to the whole headland an appearance of lurching to its fall.

Water sinking through the chalk oozes through the sand and dissolves it, undermining the white bed above till masses of chalk that have lost all support hurtle down. But the chalk itself is full of cavosities caused by the soft rock being eaten into by the sea-winds. Consequently the entire mass is in incessant decomposition and is crumbling down.

The mist had blown away, and Winefred was able, on looking up, to see the whole cliff towering above her, the white summit caught by the light of the rising sun.

Jackdaws, gulls, choughs, alarmed at the sight of a man descending towards their haunts, were wheeling, plunging, screaming.

The cord by which Jack was descending appeared to Winefred but as a thread of black horsehair.

He had grappled the protuberances of chalk and progressed, creeping downwards and inwards, about the humps and into corrosions wrought by the sea blasts. The surface was not only scooped out, but was also pockmarked, where nodules of flint had dropped away exposing the sockets in which they had lain. So friable was the rock that there was ever present the danger of the flints detaching themselves and raining down on the head of the climber.

There were projections on which the foot might rest and to which the fingers might cling, but each projection had to be tested before being used, so deficient in tenacity was the chalk.

Winefred could not distinguish the little steel crook employed by Jack, but it served him in good stead; he could dig it into the rock, and by its aid draw himself along.

For a moment he disappeared behind a protruding mass, then he re-emerged, creeping like a fly. Now he stood balancing himself on a ledge so narrow as to be imperceptible from below, and seemed to be studying what looked like a smooth wall along which he purposed to advance by clinging.

A profile of rock stood out that bore a resemblance to George III. This the climber had to circumvent, but he was slow in accomplishing his work.

He penetrated into every recess, searching among the nests of the sea-birds――so it seemed to Winefred, and so only could she account for the delay and his occasional disappearances. Then, if too much cord had been let out, he was constrained to gather it up as he crawled farther till it was again taut.

He was on the chin of King George, groping in the jaw for some hollow into which he could insert a foot, some nodule sufficiently firm to which he could hold. Now he was plastered against His Majesty's cheek, sliding towards the ear.

Then down came a hail of dislodged flints and a snow shower of chalk, as Jack slipped.

Next moment a scud of vapour swept past and blotted out the summit of the cliff.

Winefred had her knuckles pressed into her mouth to check the cry that she could not otherwise restrain, or the gasp that accompanied every venturesome movement of the climber.

When the fog passed away she saw him again. He had reached a green ledge where grew samphire. She wondered what he was about. She could see that he was shaking the cord. This was passed over projecting ribs of rock overhead. Clearly at last she made out that he needed more of the rope to be let out. He was on a terrace that ran in under arches of rock, and there doubtless nests abounded.

But the line was entangled by the rock over which it passed, and so strained that no amount of shaking would communicate a signal to those above.

Winefred could see Jack, his feet at the edge, looking up, shaking the cord, then desisting, then striving to disengage it, so that the vibration might be continuous, but all his efforts were ineffectual.

Should she ascend to those aloft, by the thorn tree? It would take her twenty minutes to reach them, and by that time Jack's object in signalling would be gained or abandoned.

She saw him stand motionless, considering what his course should be. Then she saw him release himself from the rope and fix the crosspole upon which he had been seated and fasten it between two horns of chalk.

At that moment down rushed something that turned and whirled through the air. It was the roller over which the rope had passed. With the relaxation of the strain, it had shot over the brink. With the fall of the roller the cord had become loosened, and, to her horror, Winefred saw the end with the crosspole dangling free at a distance of several feet from the shelf on which stood the climber.

The fall of the roller had disengaged the crosspole.

She knew at once that he was a prisoner fast in the face of the terrible precipice, with fifty feet of impending crag above, and nearly four hundred of sheer drop below.

With a cry of dismay she cast herself on the pebbles.

Then a hand was laid on her shoulder, and she was shaken, and she heard her mother's voice, agitated with feeling: 'Winefred, this is too much! After that I have robbed him, are you about to kill him?'

'Mother!' She started to her knees. 'Mother!'

'On me only is the guilt of the robbery, on you――that of his death.'

'Mother!'

In a tempest of conflicting feelings――fear for Jack, horror at what had been revealed, she gasped: 'You say that, mother!'

Jane Marley shrank back.

But Winefred could not even now withdraw eyes and mind, save for one staggering moment, from the swaying rope and the green shelf.

She saw Jack issue from the depths of the cave, come to the verge, and look at the pole. It was beyond his reach.

Then he tried the side of the rock to which he had adhered as he worked his way forward to the cave. Apparently that way could not be retraced. He attempted it, but retreated, foiled.

Then again he stood on the turf, measuring his distance.

There was but one way of escape possible, and that was to reach the rope and pendent pole.

He drew back.

A piercing shriek burst from the lips of Winefred, as, next moment, she saw him leap――leap towards the suspended crosspole.

And in that shriek her consciousness went. She fell forward as a log upon the pebbles, and passed out of knowledge whether his young arms and accurate eye had saved him, or whether he had missed and had fallen headlong, or whether, again, he had succeeded in catching, clinging for a moment, but had been unable to maintain himself swaying as a pendulum in mid-air.