Читать книгу Sea Fog - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 5

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It would have been strange if this impression of utter solitude had not forced itself upon me, for—at that time of advanced evening and under those circumstances—my situation was one of entire loneliness. There were the deep and silent woods through which I had passed; here was the bleak plateau on which I stood. At first I saw nothing near by, nor in the distance, to indicate life, and the silence was profound. But as I gazed about me this way and that I became aware of two or three twinkling lights at perhaps a mile’s distance, deep down in the low country which lay between me and the coast; they, of course, suggested the presence of some village or solitary farmstead. And after a while, as I stood looking seaward, I saw a trail of flame coming along rapidly from west to east, not far away from where I judged the coast to be; that I knew for a railway train, speeding along the line that ran parallel with the coast itself. So there was life near at hand. Yet, none there; that place was the loneliest, and most curiously suggestive of loneliness, that I had ever been in. But even then, as I realised this, there came companionship; a nightjar went by, uttering its strange note, and as that died away amongst the neighbouring woods a nightingale suddenly burst into song in some coppice down the hill-side.

While I had stood near the mill, staring about me, a full moon had been steadily rising, and had now got to a fair height in the south-east sky. I went closer and looked at the mill. It was a great, massive structure, and so high that I saw at once that it must form a landmark for miles around, and probably far out to sea; I saw, too, that it had evidently not been in use for many a long year. There were gaps in its masonry, the doorway gaped wider than it should have done; the remnants of the long, raking sails hung desolate. A shaft of moonlight lay within the wide gap of the door, and I went inside and looked about me in the gloom, and saw then that the interior was still pretty much as it had been in working days; there was machinery there, rusty and useless, no doubt, but still in place, and there was a wooden stairway that led to upper regions. I saw, too, that somebody had turned the place to account as a shelter; there was a quantity of dried bracken stored on the ground floor, together with other things which I knew to be used by shepherds in charge of flocks. Here, perhaps, the shepherds kept house while their charges browsed the hill-sides; it was a convenient place for that. And it suddenly struck me that it would make quite a good lodging for me for that night, and save me the necessity of exploring the village or hamlet in which I had seen the lights. I might not find anything there, and the next likely place might be a long way off. Here, at any rate, I was certain of shelter, and I had still enough food in my bag to serve for supper.

It was just as I had made up my mind to stay where I was that I heard footsteps. They were still some little distance away—perhaps fifty yards—but the turf was hard and dry and crisp on the top of that hill, and I heard their slow, regular fall quite plainly, and I sprang to the door and cautiously looked out. There, plainly seen in the moonlight, was the figure of a man coming towards the mill. He came from something of the direction in which I myself had come, but rather more, a point or two, from the north-west, and that fact immediately suggested to me that this was the stranger-man of Petworth churchyard, who, after I had seen him at Graffham, had wandered round until he hit on what he was seeking. Certainly the figure resembled his....

I had to think with uncommon rapidity during the next few seconds. Did I want to meet this man again, and especially in that old mill? I knew nothing of him; I was not sure that I liked what I had seen of him. He had said that he would give much to find that mill; perhaps he would resent finding me in occupancy of it. Again, I had formed the idea that he was, or might be, somewhat cracked; if so, and he happened to carry a revolver or pistol on him, which was quite likely, he might take it into his head to rid me of his presence in unpleasant fashion.

The end of that brief spell of thinking was that while the man was still twenty or thirty yards away from the door, I sped up the stair, as noiselessly as possible. There was an open trap-door at the top; I passed through it into a wooden-floored chamber the interior of which I could make out quite well, there being a great gap in the outer wall there on the side from which the moon shone. And, standing well back in the shadow, I kept as quiet as a mouse and looked down through the trap, watching for the man to enter. There was some delay in that; evidently, having reached the place he wanted, he paused a few minutes to take a look at it and its surroundings; indeed, I heard him pacing about outside for awhile. But at last he came in through the ruinous doorway, and the moonlight falling full on his face, I saw at once that he was not the man with whom I had exchanged talk at Petworth.

Within another minute, whatever ground I might have had for uncertainty on this point was swept clean away. The man had no sooner entered the ground floor of the mill than he lighted a small but powerful lantern, and in turning it about here and there as if to examine his surroundings, he twice gave me a full view of his face; his figure I could see well enough in the moonlight. That was somewhat similar to the figure of the first man; both were solid, thick-set, shortish of height. But while the man of Petworth churchyard was bearded, the man of the mill was clean-shaven, save for a goatee beard which I took to be violently red in colour. He had the face of a rat, or a weasel, or a fox, or perhaps a mixture of all three; anyhow, he was an evil-looking customer, and I wished myself anywhere else than where I was, and cursed my own stupid foolishness for running up that stair.

Another moment and I cursed myself more than ever. For it became, nay, at once was evident that, like me, the man had made up his mind to make the old mill his quarters for the night. He set down his lantern on a ledge of the machinery that stood in the centre of the floor, and, unstringing a sort of knapsack from his shoulders, produced from it a parcel of food and a big bottle filled to the neck with some colourless liquid which looked like water, and was, of course, gin, with perhaps an admixture of water. Very fortunately for me, who stood in a somewhat cramped position at the trap-door, some idea occurred to him before he began his supper, and he hurried outside—I suppose to assure himself that there was nobody about. The instant he had vanished I sprang to some sacking, a pile of which I had noticed on coming into the loft, and hastily made a couch for myself, close to an opening in the floor through which a couple of great chains passed from above to below; thenceforward I was able to look down on my undesirable fellow-tenant from immediately above his head. And at the same time I made up my mind that if he put his head through the trap-door I would give it a crack with my oak staff—a present from Andrew Macpherson—which would make him see even more stars than the thousands which were already challenging the moonlight.

He came back after prowling around outside for awhile, and, settling himself comfortably on the piled-up bracken, he proceeded to eat and drink. He had cold meat and buttered bread, in generous slices, in his parcel, and he made great play with both by means of as ugly a knife as ever I saw, and one which he used with great dexterity. Also, he every now and then took a generous draught from his innocent-looking bottle; altogether, he struck me as being a man of good appetite. Not a wolfing man, though; he ate and drank leisurely enough, and left meat and bread in his parcel, carefully wrapping it up again and restoring it to his knapsack. Then followed exactly what I expected to see: he produced pipe, tobacco, and matches, and proceeded to smoke. I gathered from this that he anticipated complete freedom from any interruption of his tenancy, and that he considered himself as much alone as Robinson Crusoe on his island before he chanced on the footsteps.

I was by that time anxious about two things, and two things only—the first, that this goatee-bearded fellow wouldn’t take it into his ugly head to climb the stair with his lantern; the second, that he would finish his pipe and bottle and go to sleep, so that I also might. But he showed no sign of falling in with my wishes. For awhile he sat with folded arms, smoking, and—I presumed—thinking. Now that he had eaten his fill, the bottle did not seem to have any great attraction for him. But after some time, his roving eye chancing to fall on it, he drew it to him, took out the cork, and treated himself to a hearty swig, afterwards measuring the remaining quantity with an appraising glance, as if he were either reflecting on the amount he had drunk, or were thinking that it would be well to leave the rest for his next morning’s refreshment. I hoped he would knock the ashes out of his pipe then, and compose himself to sleep; instead, after putting the bottle away from him, he turned his lantern so that its full flare fell on the level surface of the machinery which he had used as a table, and, putting his hand into some inner pocket of his clothes, drew out a square packet of whity-brown paper.

I had been inquisitive about this man from the first moment of his appearance, but the sight of that packet roused feelings of curiosity to which my first speculations became as nothing. There was mystery in that, and I watched for all I was worth while its owner proceeded to unwrap it. There were many wrappings: first, the whity-brown paper aforesaid, with the appearance of which I was familiar enough, having wrapped up some thousands of small parcels in its like; then, a sheet of a better sort of paper; then, a piece of what undoubtedly was canvas; finally, a square of oiled silk. Out of the oiled silk he carefully took a folded paper, and, spreading it out very gingerly, laid it on the flat surface at his side, immediately in the glare of his lantern. I saw then that what he had before him was undoubtedly a map.

But it was not a map of the sort with which I had been familiar at school—an affair of careful engraving and colouring. It was what I then called a map; what it really was, I suppose, was a rough plan, or chart. From my overhead perch, I could not, of course, make it out; all I could see was a certain very conspicuous black dot in the very middle of the paper (which was about eight or nine inches square), some lines and marks, and, in one place, a cross, as conspicuous as the dot. These I saw, but there was more that I could not see, or, rather, could not make out—lettering, I felt certain.

The man remained poring over this chart for some little time; eventually he restored it to its wrappings as carefully as he had taken it from them, and put the packet back in its secret receptacle, which, I think, was in the lining of his waistcoat. That done, he knocked out the ashes of his tobacco, taking heed to see that no spark remained alive on the floor of the mill, and, having taken another pull at his bottle, he extinguished his light and curled himself up in the dry bracken. I could see him in the moonlight, all bundled together, his head on his arm, and before five minutes had gone I heard him snoring contentedly.

I did not go to sleep just then, but I went to sleep after a time. Until I dropped off, my brain was actively busy in wondering about what I had just seen, and in speculating on various matters connected with the man of Petworth churchyard and the man who now slept in the basement of the mill. Was there any connection between the two? What did the man of Petworth churchyard want with the mill? Why had this goatee-bearded, hatchet-faced chap come there? What was his much-treasured map about? What would he do if he found me there? Should I wake him if I stole down the stair and fled? I thought of fleeing for a time, but I was curious, and more than curious—I wanted to know what it was all about. The morning would bring light in more ways than one; I would wait till morning. And I went to sleep on my sacks and slept like a top—until I sprang into instant, keen-witted wakefulness at the sound of a scream.

I think my first notion was that this was the cry of some animal, trapped close by, or seized by another. But on the instant it came again, and I knew it then for the cry, desperate, terrorised, of a man in deadly fear and peril. I had sprung to my elbow at the first sound: at the second I looked sharply through the opening of the chains into the ground floor beneath me. The man of the map had gone; there, plainly outlined in the bracken, was the place where he had slept, but he and his bottle and his knapsack had vanished. And at that I jumped for the gap in the outer wall and looked out on a morning thick with milk-white mist. A great sea fog had rolled up from the coast and enveloped the plain and the hills, and from where I stood all the land was wrapped in its curling vapours. At first I saw nothing; then, a stifled cry coming again, I looked to my right, and there, some twenty yards away on the plateau, their figures strangely magnified and distorted in the mist, I saw two men struggling.

Two men!—but it was impossible for me to tell which of the two was my man, though I knew he was there. It seemed to me that one of the two had the other by the throat, and was endeavouring to force him to the ground. I could hear their pantings and groanings as they swayed this way and that. They were like two wrestlers, straining every muscle and sinew to throw each other, and for a time neither seemed to gain any advantage. They drew farther and farther away from me in their struggles; sometimes a curling of the mist wrapped them altogether; sometimes, as a strong shaft of sunlight hit their bending and twisting bodies, I saw them more plainly. It was in one of these sharp gleams of the sun that one suddenly mastered the other and forced him groaning to the ground, and in the same gleam that I saw the flash of something that shone and brightened as it caught the sun. There was a deep, horrible sound after that, and the next instant the man who had fallen was lying still, and the other was vanishing in the morning mist.

I suppose I stood there at the gap in the wall for several minutes, staring—just staring. But my brain was busy. Who was the second man? Was he the man whom I had seen at Petworth and again at Graffham? Had he come to the mill in the night, or in the early morning, found the other man there, and quarrelled with or attacked him? And which of the two men was it that was lying there, so awfully motionless? And would the man who had run away come back? Was he, perhaps, only a few yards away, hidden in the sea fog?

I waited awhile in the profound silence—then, unable to bear it any longer, and grasping my oak staff firmly in my right hand, I crept down the stair and out of the mill, and across the dew-besprinkled turf to the fallen man. It was he of the goatee beard, and he lay there with his arms thrown wide and his eyes glazed, and red blood was still running from the gash in his throat.