Chapter III

“Not so scared as you were?” he heard Jake say. “It used to be everyday work, I tell you. Parson and Squire and all Norland were in the traffic once. They’d be in it to-day, if they’d wit to do like us, without risk o’ being found out.”

The horror of it came afresh to Nora. Before she knew, a sharp cry escaped her. It seemed that she was compelled to cry aloud in warning to any sailor-men who might be steering for the light on Norland Point. Then she heard another oath from Jake, and Dick’s voice in her ear.

“We’ve got to run for it now, little fool.”

They could not run for it yet, but had to wriggle back through heather drenched already by the wet sea-wind. Then they turned the shoulder of a rock, and waited breathless in its shelter, listening to the two men as they hunted for them. They dared not stand upright, dared not creep out into the grassy open; for there was light enough to show them plainly.

To and fro the searchers went. Once Jake was so near their hiding-place that they thought he must hear their hurried breathing; but he passed on, kicking the heather to right and left as if he was intent on bolting a hare from its forme.

“May be it was a cliff-bird screeching,” he growled. “There’s nobody here as I can find.”

“And may be it was Black Garrowby’s spirit a-calling us,” quavered the other. “He calls for death, as all men know.”

“Don’t you talk of what men know, Silas,” said Jake, with bitter fury. “Get home to your mammy, and leave me to a man’s job. I’ll have no babbies hindering me.”

Dick guessed, by the sound of their voices, that they were on the far side of the rocks. He whispered to Nora, and together they crept quickly through the last of the heather, turned for a backward glance when they reached the smooth turf beyond, and never ceased to run till they slid down into the glen where they had heard Jake hatching out his plot not long ago.

Here they found breath again; but the wind came up the hollow with sudden fury, and Dick thought of the lantern on the cliff—of ships at sea.

“It’s half a mile to old Rossiter’s cottage, Nora,” he said. “Get there as fast as you can.”

She drew closer to him. “You’re coming, too?”

“I can’t. There’s just a chance I can get that light away from the cliff. It isn’t much of a chance. That’s why you have to go to Rossiter’s. Tell him what’s doing up at the Point.”

Nora pictured the half-mile to the cottage—every step of it thick with ghosts and twilight—and clung to him.

“Cry-baby, like the man Jake sneered at?” said Dick, and hated himself for the needed roughness.

She stood away from him, in the glen’s windy dusk, her pride on fire. “I’ll go,” she said.

The wind buffeted her as she came to the open cliff-top. It was rising fast, and made queer noises—sometimes like hounds in full cry, pursuing her—sometimes like a pack of goblins. A lull came when she reached Tranter’s Heath, and from its stunted firs she heard the clanking of a chain.

Panic seized her. She could not take another step through this ghost-ridden upland, and her heart cried out for Dick. Twin seldom cries to twin in need without a quick answer. As if he were close at hand, she heard Dick telling her that sailor-men were in peril on the sea, and that they needed her.

She plunged into what waited for her under the firs. The clanking of chains ceased, and she ran into something big, and soft, and furry—something that brayed gently at her.

Nora put her arms about the donkey’s neck, and cried from sheer relief. The clanking chain was his protest against the master who tethered him to a tree each night on Tranter’s Heath to listen to the ghosts. She had forgotten in her terror that he had his sleeping-quarters here.

“Joseph,” she sobbed, “I’m tired and frightened.”

Joseph rubbed against her cheek, as if to say that he was tired and frightened, too. She stayed with him a little, gathering comfort and giving it, till Dick’s voice seemed to run down the wind that rose again and yelped and snarled. _There were sailor-men going in peril of the sea._

She kissed Joseph’s nose with tender haste, and he brayed forlornly as she left him. There was half her journey done when she got beyond the stunted trees and out into the heather-track that led to the beach and Rossiter’s cottage; but the way seemed endless. The wind, dead against her, brought her to a standstill every now and then; and once she had to lie flat in the heather and let a hurricane of sleet pass overhead, chilling her to the bone.

_She ran into something big and soft._
]

Nora, as she struggled on, was not afraid of the storm’s fury, but she dreaded the lulls in between—the lulls when she heard strange sobs and wailing cries among the chill, wet heather, and fancied drowning men about her on all sides. Again she called to Dick, and his hand seemed to grasp hers and lead her forward.

Another lull in the wind came, just as she reached Pinder’s Gorse. An awful crying sounded from behind, and she saw a man running through the gloom. He headed so straight for her that Nora could only spring aside, and drop to her knees, and creep into the prickly gorse in search of shelter. She lay there, in an agony of dread. He would hunt for her, as the men had sought through the heather not long ago. But Dick had been with her then.

She tried to snuggle closer into the gorse, but the thorns drove her back. So then she lay there, waiting for the end. The man must find her soon, and would kill her—and Dick would be sorry. Somehow it was Dick she thought of. He would miss her.

The man who had helped Jake to set the Wreckers’ Light on Norland Point did not pause at Pinder’s Gorse. As they watched beside the light, Jake and he, a loathing of it all had come to him, a listening for the phantom tread of Black Garrowby’s feet, till he had taken flight across the moor. He, too, had blundered into the grey donkey tethered on Tranter’s Heath, had fancied it was Garrowby himself and fled from it.

Nora heard him go past the gorse, crying that all the moor was after him. The wind drowned his uproar by-and-by; and the girl drew a breath of sheer relief. She waited awhile, then crept out into the open. Every step she took was shod with panic, but she came at last to the dip of the moor that showed her Rossiter’s cottage, dim in the twilight, and the little land-locked bay in front of it.

It seemed too good to be true, but Rossiter’s door was real enough as she fumbled for the handle and opened it. Old Ben was real, too, sitting there beside a blaze of wrackwood, a clay pipe between his teeth as he watched old days take shape in the dancing flames.

His pipe dropped to the floor as he turned and saw Nora standing in the fire-glow. She was white and shaken, and there was terror in her eyes.

“Why, it’s Parson’s maid,” he said.

She ran to him, and leaped to his knee, and cried her heart out against his tarry coat. “I’ve been frightened, Ben,” she pleaded.

“Well, that’s gone. Tuck your head into my elbow-crook, and sleep it all away. It won’t be the first time.”

She rested there, in the crook of his tarry sleeve, but not for long.

“Dick’s calling me,” she said, slipping from his knee.

“That’s no news. You’re for ever calling, each to t’other.”

He was for comforting her again; but she was hearing the cries of sailor-men out there.

“Ben,” she said, “they’ve put a lantern on Norland Point. Dick sent me down to tell you—and he’s in danger.”

Rossiter’s easy-going cheeriness left him. “It’s come to that, has it? Well, I feared it would.”

She watched him reach down a big lantern from the shelf beside the hearth, watched him trim and light it.

Nora was white and shaken still, but she tugged at his sleeve impatiently. “Dick’s calling me,” she repeated.

_She watched him trim and light the lantern._
]

“You’d best stay here,” he grumbled, “but there’s no use in argufying when twin calls to twin.”

They went out together into the grey dusk. The little bay was quiet enough, but as they turned their backs on it and got up into the high cliff-lands, the gale swept over them in earnest. Whether Nora liked it or not, she felt herself picked up and sheltered under Ben’s storm-coat. It was snug and warm there; but she would rather be braving the weather, as Dick was braving it.

Rossiter halted only once, when they came to the headland high above his cottage. He set his lantern in a cranny of the rocks, made sure that it was safe against the gale’s fury, and glanced out to sea.

“There’s two lights now,” he growled, “and even chances for the sailor-men. If they see this first, it ‘ull guide ’em straight into that little cove o’ mine.”

He felt a struggling under his big storm-cape, and Nora’s head was thrust out into the wind that lashed and stung. “Hurry, Ben,” she pleaded. “Dick’s calling me—and he’s all alone.”