The Green Ray/Chapter XXI

Oliver Sinclair was safe and sound, and, for the moment, out of danger. The darkness of the cavern was so great that he could see nothing of the interior. Only a dim twilight penetrated between the intervals of the waves, when the entrance was left partially clear.

Nevertheless, Sinclair endeavoured his utmost to see where Miss Campbell could have found a refuge. But in vain.

“Miss Campbell! Miss Campbell!” he shouted.

No words can depict his feelings when he heard a voice answering him,—

“Mr. Sinclair! Mr. Sinclair!”

Miss Campbell was alive!

But where could she be out of reach of the billows?

Crawling along the footpath, Sinclair went all round the end of the cavern.

On the left side was a small recess formed by a cleft in the rock, where the columns were disjointed. It was wide enough at the entrance, but growing narrower, only left room for one person. Legend gives this gap the name of “Fingal's Armchair.”

It was here Miss Campbell had taken refuge when surprised by the invading waters.

Some hours earlier, the low tide had left the entrance to the cave quite practicable, and the imprudent girl had come to make her daily visit. Buried in thought, she little dreamt of the danger which threatened her from the rising tide, and had not noticed the approaching storm. When she would have left the cave, what was her horror on discovering that there was no chance of finding a way out through the rapidly encroaching waters.

Nevertheless, Miss Campbell retained her self-possession; she looked around for a place of safety, and after two or three vain attempts to gain the outer landing-place, she managed, at the risk of being swept off by the waves, to reach this armchair of Fingal.

Here Oliver Sinclair found her cowering out of reach of the sea.

“Miss Campbell!” he cried, “how could you have been so imprudent as to venture here when such a storm was coming on? We gave you up for lost.”

“And you have come to save me, Mr. Sinclair?” said Helena, more moved by the young man's courage than affrighted by the dangers she had yet to encounter.

“I have come to get you out of this place, and by the help of God I will do so! You are not afraid?”

“Oh, no; I have no fear; no, not since you are here. And besides, could I feel anything but admiration before such a spectacle? Just look!”

Helena had drawn back to the farthest end of the niche. Oliver Sinclair stood in front of her, and tried to shelter her, as best he could, when a higher wave than usual threatened to reach her.

Both were silent. What need of words for Oliver to be understood, or to express all that Helena felt?

Meanwhile the young man with unspeakable anguish, not on his own account, but for Miss Campbell's sake, saw the tempest grow more threatening. Could he not hear from the howling of the wind, and the uproar of the sea, that the storm was raging with increasing fury? Could he not see that the waters were still rising, and it would not be high tide for some hours yet?

Where would the waters stop rising? It was impossible to foresee, but it was only too apparent that the surging billows were gradually filling the cavern. If they were not in total darkness, it was only because the crests of the waves were impregnated with light from outside, and, besides this, large sheets of phosphorus cast a kind of electric glare on the diamond-shaped prisms of the basaltic columns, and reflected a vague, livid light.

During those rapid gleams, Oliver Sinclair turned towards Miss Campbell, and looked at her with emotions not altogether evoked by the danger around them.

She was gazing in rapture at this sublime spectacle of a tempest in a cavern!

At that moment a wave, higher than the rest, dashed right up to the recess of Fingal's armchair, and Sinclair feared that they would both be swept from their place of refuge.

He held the young girl in his arms, as though she were a prey which the sea would have snatched from him.

“Oliver! Oliver!” cried Miss Campbell, losing her self-possession in a moment of terror.

“Don't be alarmed, Helena!” replied Sinclair. “I will protect you, Helena!—I—”

He said he would protect her! But how? How could he shelter her from the violence of the waves if their fury increased, if the water rose still higher, and made their present place of refuge untenable? What other place was there to afford a shelter from this terrific crashing and leaping of water? All these contingencies passed before him in their terrible reality.

Self-possession was all-important, and Sinclair resolutely determined to maintain his composure.

And well he might, all the more so, as the young girl's physical, if not moral, strength must give way before long. Exhausted by the wearying struggles, reaction would soon set in. Sinclair already felt that she was growing gradually weaker. He endeavoured to reassure her, although he had himself given up all hope.

“Helena—my dear Helena!” he murmured, “on my return to Oban—I learnt—that it was, thanks to you—that I was saved from the Gulf of Coryvrechan!”

“Oliver—you knew it?” replied Miss Campbell, in a stifled voice.

“Yes—and I will show my gratitude to-day!—I will bring you safely out of Fingal's Cave.”

How dare Sinclair speak of safety, when the sea was dashing right up to the niche? He could only partially shelter his companion from its fury, and once or twice was himself almost swept off—only resisting the force of the water with an almost superhuman effort, feeling Helena's arms tightly clasped round him, and knowing that she, too, must have been carried off with him.

It must have been about half-past nine in the evening when the tide was at its highest, and the billows were surging into the cavern with the impetuosity of an avalanche; they broke with a deafening roar against the sides of the rock, and such was their fury, that every now and then pieces of the basalt became detached and fell, making dark circles in the phosphorescent sheets of foam. Would the columns themselves gradually crumble away before the indescribable fury of this onslaught? Might not even the roof of the vault fall in?

Sinclair could not quiet these harrowing thoughts; he felt an irresistible torpor creeping over him, which he tried in vain to shake off, and which was occasioned by the want of air, at times; for, although it came in abundantly with the waves, they seemed to draw it all out again as they swept back from the cavern. Helena's strength was exhausted, and she became unconscious.

“Oliver!—Oliver!” she murmured, as she swooned away in his arms.

Oliver was crouching with the young girl in the farthest corner of the recess; he felt her cold, inanimate form, and endeavoured to chafe her with the little strength left him. Already the water was up to his waist, and if he, too, lost consciousness, it would be all over with them both!

The gallant young man held out for several hours longer. He supported Miss Campbell in his arms, and shielded her as best he could from the shock of the waves—and this in total darkness—for there was not even a gleam of phosphorescent light visible now, and in the midst of the continuous thundering and roaring of the tempest. It was no longer the voice of Selma which resounded in the palace of Fingal! It was the frightful barking of the dogs of Kamtschatka, which, says Michalet, “roam about in bands of thousands during the long nights, howling furiously at the roaring of the North Sea!”

At last the tide began to go down. Sinclair noticed that with the lowering of the water the waves grew less furious. The darkness in the cavern was so intense, that outside it seemed comparatively light, and in this obscurity the entrance to the cavern, no longer obstructed by the surging of the billows, could be dimly seen. Ere long the mists of night alone besieged the armchair of Fingal, the waves ceased to curl round them with treacherous fury. Hope once again revived in Sinclair's breast.

By calculating the time which had elapsed since high tide, he knew that it must be past midnight. Two hours more, and the footway would be clear of the foaming breakers, and would then be practicable. For this event he waited, peering eagerly through the darkness, and at last he was rewarded.

The moment to leave the cave had come.

Miss Campbell, meanwhile, had not recovered consciousness. Sinclair took her inanimate form in his arms; then carefully descending from their place of refuge, he groped along the narrow ledge of rock, the iron hand-rail of which had been twisted and torn away by the heavy seas.

As the waves now and again swept towards him, he stood still for a moment, or drew back a step.

At last, just as he had reached the entrance of the cavern, a great wave broke right over them—he thought that they must have been crushed against the rock, or hurled into the foaming abyss below.

By a supreme effort, he managed to retain his footing, and, taking advantage of the retreating wave, he rushed out of the cave.

In a moment he had reached the angle of the cliffs, where the brothers, Partridge, and Dame Bess, who had now joined them, had remained all the night.

They were saved!

But this paroxysm of moral and physical energy, to which Oliver Sinclair had worked himself up, suddenly abandoned him, and after giving Miss Campbell into Dame Bess's arms, he fell exhausted at the foot of the rocks. Had it not been for his courageous devotion, Helena would never have come out of Fingal's cave alive.