In the Dead of Night: A Novel. Volume 1 (of 3)

A hot, windless August day had settled down into a dull, brooding evening, presageful of a coming storm. It was nearly dark by the time Lionel Dering was ready to turn his face homeward. The tide was coming in with an ominous muffled roar; the wind, unfelt all day, was now blowing in fitful puffs from various points of the compass, so that the weathercock on the green, in front of the Silver Lion, was more undecided than usual, and did not know its own mind for two minutes at a time. The boatmen were busy with their tiny craft, making everything fast for the night; and the bathing men were dragging their machines high and dry beyond reach of the incoming tide. Many of the excursionists—those with families chiefly—were already making their way towards the railway station; but others there were who seemed bent on keeping up their merriment to the last moment. These latter could be seen through the wide-open windows of the Silver Lion, footing it merrily on the club-room floor, to the music of two wheezy fiddles. A few minutes later there comes a warning whistle from the engine. The music stops suddenly; the country-dance is left unfinished; pipes are laid aside; glasses are quickly emptied; and the lads and lasses, with many a shout and burst of laughter, rush helter-skelter across the green, to find their places in the train.

“We shall have a rough night, Ben,” said Mr. Dering to a man who was coming up from the beach.

“Yes, sir, there’s a storm brewin’ fast,” answered Ben, carrying a finger to his forehead. “If I was you, Mr. Dering,” he added, “I wouldn’t go over the cliffs to-night. It ain’t safe after dark, and the storm’ll break afore you get home.” But Mr. Dering merely shook his head, laughed, bade Ben good-night, and kept on his way.

The old boatman’s words proved true. The first flash of lightning came just as the last houses of Melcham were lost to view behind a curve of the road, and when Lionel had two miles of solitary walking still before him. The thunder and the rain, however, were still far out at sea.

By this time it was almost dark, but Mr. Dering pressed forward without hesitation or delay. The cliff road, dangerous as it would have been under such circumstances to any ordinary wayfarer, had for him no terrors. He knew every yard of it as well as he knew the walk under the apple-trees in his own garden. It was not the first time by any means that he had traversed it after nightfall. As for the lightning, it was rather an assistance than otherwise, serving every two or three minutes, as it did, to show him exactly where he was. It was a bad road enough, certainly. Unfenced in several places, with here and there a broad, yawning chasm in the direct path, where some huge bulk of the soft earthy cliff, undermined by fierce winter tides, had broken bodily away and had gone to feed the ever-hungry waves. But to Lionel every dangerous point was familiar, and he followed the little circuitous bends in the path, necessitated by the breaks in the frontage of the cliff, instinctively and without thought.

He had been thinking of Edith West—his ladye-love, whom he might not hope ever to see again. In his long solitary walks both by day and night she was almost always in his thoughts. Not but what Lionel, this evening, had an eye for the lightning, so beautifully terrible in its apparently purposeless vagaries. Fast following one another, came the blue, quivering flashes, lighting up, for one brief moment at a time, the barren skyward-climbing cliff, and the still more barren waste of sea.

“Like my life—like my life,” murmured Lionel to himself, his eyes still bent on the wide tract of moorland, which had just been lighted up by a more vivid flash than common. “Barren and unprofitable. Without byre or homestead. Left unploughed, unfenced, uncared for. Of no apparent use, were it not that a few wild-flowers choose to grow there, and a few birds, equally wild, to build their nests there. But over it, as over more favoured spots, the free breeze of heaven blows day and night, and keeps it sweet; and the sea makes everlasting music at its feet.”

These thoughts were still in Mr. Dering’s mind when a sudden turn in the pathway brought him in view of the lighthouse, whose gleaming lantern, although full half a mile away, shone out through the coming storm like the cheery welcome of a friend.

The thunder was coming nearer, bringing the rain with it. The flashes were becoming more vividly painful. The sea’s hoarse chorus was growing more loud, and triumphant. Lionel had paused for a moment to gather breath. A flash—and there, not fifty yards away, and coming towards him, was a man—a stranger! It was the work of an instant for the lightning to photograph the picture on his brain, but that one instant was enough for him to see and recognize the deadly peril in which the man was placed. He was marching unknowingly to his death. Not six yards in front of him yawned the most dangerous chasm in the whole face of the cliff.

In another moment Lionel had recovered his presence of mind. “Stop! stop for your life!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Don’t stir another step.” It was too dark for him to see whether the man had heard and understood his warning cry. He must wait for the next flash to tell him that. The words had hardly left his lips when the thunder burst almost immediately overhead, as it seemed, and the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. Lionel, meantime, was making his way as quickly as he could round the back of the chasm. Two minutes more would bring him to the very spot where he had seen the stranger. But while he had still some dozen yards or more of the dangerous path to traverse, there came another blinding flash. It had come and gone in the twinkling of an eye, but that brief second of time was sufficient to show Lionel that the man was no longer there. An inarticulate cry of horror burst from his lips. With beating heart and straining nerves, he pressed forward till he stood on the very spot where he had seen the man; but he was standing there alone.

The storm was at its height. The forked flashes came thick and fast. One crack of thunder was followed by another, before the echoed mutterings of the last had time to die away. A wild hurricane of wind and rain was beating furiously over land and sea. Utterly regardless of the storm, Lionel lay down at full length on the short, wet turf, and shading his eves with his hands, peered down into the black gulf below. It was a dangerous thing to do, but in the excitement of the moment all sense of personal fear was forgotten. He waited for the flashes; but when they came they showed him nothing save the wild turmoil of the rising tide as it dashed itself in fury against the huge boulders with which the beach was thickly strewn. It would be high water in half-an-hour. Already the base of the cliff was washed by the inrushing waves. Lionel shouted with all his might, but the wind blew the sound back again, and the thunder drowned it. He stood up despairingly. What should he do to succour the poor wretch who lay there, dying or, perhaps, already dead, at the foot of the cliff? What could he do? Alone and unaided he could do nothing. He must seek the help of others. But where? The nearest point where he could hope to get assistance was the lighthouse, and that was nearly half-a-mile away. But long before the lighthouse could have been reached, and help brought back, the rising tide would have completely barred the passage along the foot of the cliffs, and would, in all probability, have washed the body out to sea. At the point where he was standing, the cliff had a sheer descent of a hundred feet to the beach. But suddenly Mr. Dering remembered, and it seemed to him like a flash of inspiration, that no great distance away there was a slight natural break in the cliff, known as “The Smugglers’ Staircase.” It was merely a narrow gully or seam in the face of the rock, not much wider than an ordinary chimney. If it had ever really been used by smugglers in years gone by as a natural staircase, by means of which access could be had to the beach, they must have been very active and reckless fellows indeed. But what had been made use of by one man might be made use of by another, Lionel thought, and, with some faint renewal of hope in his breast, he made his way along the cliff in the direction of the staircase. If he could only get down to the beach before the tide had risen much higher, and could succeed in finding the body, he might, perhaps, be able to obtain some foothold among the crannies of the cliff, where he would be beyond reach of the waves, and where he might wait till daybreak, and the ebbing of the tide, should give him a chance of seeking help elsewhere.

But here he was at the staircase—a place, of a truth, to try a man’s nerve, even by broad daylight. Although Lionel had never ventured either up or down it, he was no stranger to its peculiar features. More than once, in his rambles along the cliffs, he had paused to examine it, and to wonder whether the jagged, misshapen ledges of protruding rock from which it was supposed to derive its likeness to a gigantic staircase, were the result of nature’s handiwork or that of man.

Lionel had lost no time. From his first sight of the stranger till now was not more than five or six minutes. Pausing for a moment on the edge of the staircase, he flung his hat aside, buttoned his coat, and then, instinctively, turned up his cuffs. Then he went down on his hands and knees, and was just lowering one leg over the edge of the cliff; when his collar was roughly seized, and a hoarse voice growled in his ear: “In heaven’s name, Mr. Dering, what are you about?”

For the moment, Lionel was startled. Next instant he recognized Bunce, the coastguardsman—a very worthy fellow, to whom he was well known. A few rapid words from Lionel explained everything. “All the same, Mr. Dering, you can’t bring the dead back to life, do how you will,” said Bunce, “and that man’s as dead as last year’s mackerel, you may depend on’t. Let alone which, the tide’s right up to the bottom of the cliff. No, no, Mr. Dering—axing your pardon—but one live man is worth twenty dead uns.”

“Bunce, you are a fool!” said Lionel, wrathfully. “If I were not in a hurry, I would prove it to you. Take your hand off my collar, sir. I tell you I am going down here. If you choose to help me, go to the lighthouse and get Jasper to come back with you, and bring some ropes and a lantern or two, and whatever else you think might be useful. If you don’t choose to help me, go about your business, and leave me to do mine.”

“But you are going to certain death; you are indeed, Mr. Dering,” pleaded the coastguardsman.

“Bunce,” said Lionel, “you are an old woman. Goodbye.” There was a flash, and Bunce caught a momentary glimpse of a stern white face, and two resolute eyes. When the next flash came, Lionel was not to be seen. He was on his perilous journey down the Smugglers’ Staircase.