SILVERSANDS

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 17 October 1925, Page 32

SILVERSANDS

B-r ERIC LEACROFT. Author of "Winter Corn."

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Audrey Deane is companion to a selfish Italian Countess living near an English seaside resort. On her way back from the town to the house one summer afternoon ■he encounters John Kverehot, a novelist, who out of poverty has tramped from Cornwall. They walk back to the house together, and as thej are saying good-bye Everehot fainti from hunger. Hβ Iβ carried into the house. Evershot ha» under offer from his uncle, Standing, head of a clothing firm, to go Into business. The Standings are holiday-making In the neighbourhood, ana Everehot, the Countess and Audrey visit them. John rebels against a destiny wnicn he thinks would be the end of him as a writer. Audrey meets John on the beacn, and they drift* off in a boat together. CHAPTER V. Seen from the cliff above Silvereands the channel had looked as smooth as a great pond, though here and there its surface of peacock blue had deepened to bands of peacock green, which anybody with an eye for sea changes would have known for the indication of a deep ground swell, the fringe of come profound disturbance away in the open ocean. But now, from the cockle shell in which the two young people were drifting, the -water looked nearly black, and the swell became a very present reality. At i one moment the boat would be sliding down an endless slope with, a surface that shone like oilskin, down and down to a watery valley, from which only the pale brow of Hamborough showed above the bounding ridges; and then came the long slow climb to a dizzy pinnacle from which a ten mile stretch of coast showed in clean-cut detail, with Silversands one of many little pockets of white beach that nestled under the outer bastion of England»,At such moments the eye would rest eagerly on the homely details of the landscape —a farm nestling under the shoulder of a kill, a clump of high beeches, a distant church tower, a •skeleton windmill on a far ridge, and Grandwycke pier head, where an invisible but just audible band wae playing in the open air. But it was only a glimpse, for in an instant would come another sickening ewoop, the land swung and dipped out of eight, and they were heading downward again into what seemed to Audrey a very convincing imitation of the bottomless pit. John Evershot, squatting calmly in the ■bottom of the boat, gave her an encouraging" emile as they β-wung down for the hundredth time into a trough of the swell, gloomy even under the unclouded sky of noon. . "Great, isn't it?" he cried, with a note of boyish glee that struck Audrey as offensively out of place. "I could spend the rest of my life like this." "You probably will," said the girl with a shudder. "F*r heaven's sake make signals or—or hoist a eail or something. I think it'e perfectly loathsome to go on without doing anything." And in desperation she began to wave a minute square of handkerchief, which, since the 'boat was at the moment at the bottom of the switchback, could only have been visible from the camp on Hamborough tt> a very keen observer with a telescope. But the young man remained motionless, and continued to look highly I pleased with himself and with the prospect of a grave in ten fathoms of water. "When there's nothing to be done," he proclaimed calmly, "the wise man does nothing." "The more fool he," eaid Audrey scornfully. "Here we are, in an open 'boat, with no oars, and not even a keg of water, and no land nearer than America [ The novelist waved a protesting arm towards the receding shores of their j native land, but Audrey refused to be ' corrected. "And South America at that," she went on. "The coastguard told mc co the otber day. And there you eit like an Aztic idol and pretend there's nothing to 'be done." The young man tried to look repentant, but without much success. "If only we. had an oar," he said musingly, "it's just possible that I might be able to make a sail out of my shirt. That is, if you happen to have kept that bit of string I lent you the other day." "Which I haven't," said Audrey curtly. "And in any case we haven't an oar, so the suggestion is merely silly. So tne only question seems to ba whether we shall die of starvation or of drowning." In that case it appeared that they were fated to drown, for her companion promptly produced from his pocket a large packet made up in greaseproof paper. "You ccc, I didn't know what time you'd come to Silversands," he explained, "so I came provided for a long wait. I expect you're hungry. Won't you try a ham sandwich ?" Whereupon Audrey went pale under her freckles and turned her back on him. But in a moment she turned back again, glowing with excitement. I "Land ahead!" she cried. "Look! I We're making straight for it." [ A low, green mound, which seemed to i have sprung suddenly from the empty I sea, lay right athwart their course, j long and narrow, like the back of some i slll g£ isn s <?a monster floating on the black water. And at one end, just above the snout of the beast, rose the silhouette of a tower or lighthouse "Hail Columbia!" said the ,voun» man gravely. "But no; you said 'South America, didn't you? ' And I seem to see sheep feeding. Ifs probably the Argentine." ' But Audrey did not condescend to be annoyed. Her spirits had gone up with a bound at the eight of green-pastures sloping to a wide beach of yellow sands already within hailing distance if there had been anybody to hail. But the beach was deserted, and when a moment later the boat ran easily down a Ion" swell and landed, light as a bird, on the edge of the water, a pack of gulls rose with protesting clamour againet the invasion of their solitude. John leaped into sudden activity, sprang out into two feet of water and, before Audrey could protest, clutched her round the waist and landed her dry shod "bn the hot sand. Then he darted back into the water and dragged the boat up the gentle incline until it rested clear of the waves. "But where on earth are we?" asked the girl wonderingly, as he sank breathless beside her. John had to confess that he hadn't the eeallest idea. After all they had been at sea less than an hour: * so it couldn't be one of the Channel Islands, still iess the Isle of Wight. And he was contemptuous of Audreys suggestion that it might be Lundv Island which, he said, would have involved a trip round Land's End. Presumably it was one of those uncharted islands which, even in these days, are sometimes lighted upon -by mariners who stray into the byways of the sea. But this wae too much even for Audrey's vague geography, and when jn the end It occurred to them to look at the ordnance map of Grandwycke and ite environs -which John carried In hi*

'pocket the mystery was solved, and proved to be no mystery at all. For less than three miles to the south-west of Hamborough Head there appeared, on the authority of His Majesty's Stationery Office, to lie a small circlet of green," less than a mile round, endowed with the name of Merlin Island, and equipped, according to the map, with a lighthouse (disused), a hermitage (site of), a camp (British) and an extensive collection of tumuli.

It was only then that it came back to Audrey that she had heard of MerKn Island from the game coastguard who had pointed out the waterway to South America, and though it had then been invisible in a sea mist, she had one day seen it from the brow of Hamborough, clear cut as a pebble on the outer rim of a milky sea. In the dizzy ups and downs of the channel swell she had forgotten all about it, and even now the turfy hillside that sloped gently down to the sands where they lay was so different from the image in her memory that she could hardly believe that this was really the dream island that she had glimpsed a month ago.

But she had no fault to find with it: it was delightfully warm and delightfully green and. above all. immovable. Grandwycke pier and the line of boarding houses behind it were still visible across the waste of unpleasant waters. She thought of its noise and dust and lounging visitors and the mainland no longer seemed desirable. She felt that sense of peace which envelopes those who gaze at a distant landscape across intervening water, and the very fact that England, at a distance of three miles, looked so gay and tranquil, heightened the pleasure of escaping from its less pleasing realities. With her eyes resting lazily on the distant mainland, she sank into a pleasant day dream, until the sudden intrusion of a ham sandwich under her nose suddenly awoke her to the fact that the idea of lunch, far from being abhorrent, had become one of the most attractive in the world.

No doubt it was her duty to be girding her companion into some kind of display that would attract the attention of that somnolent mainland to their plight. But somehow the mainland and Easings and the problems of the fete had dwindled in importance as much as they had receded in space, and John Evershot proved himself such a pleasant companion in her enforced truancy that she could not find it in her heart to quarrel with him, Besides, the ham sandwiches of Merlin Island were only a fair return for the meringues of Hamborough, and it would have been ungracious to decline them or to pretend to enjoy them less than she really did. And after lunch there was the island to explore, a duty which no marooned person has any right to forego, however short he intends his stay to be. With the help of Jack's map and a bird's eye view from the crown of the island, which rose to an elevation of 64 feet above the sea, the chief feature of the place could be taken in at a glance. In addition to the lighthouse, the camp, which resembled Hamborough but lacked a dewpond ("so you'll have to shave in salt water," said Audrey), and the site of the adandoned Jiermitage, the island contained, as its only other fixture, an ancient blackthorn which had found little comfort in the salt air and had spread its spinous branches almost along the ground. Here, if anywhere, they might have expected to find the shepherd of these island sheep, taking cover from the molten glare of the sky. But its only inhabitant was a small bird with a plaintive voice which Jack declared to be a meadow pipit. Of human habitation there was no trace, either here or anywhere else in the bare little sea meadow. Audrey's profession of disappointment sounded strangely like a sigh of relief. "Perhaps it was," she admitted when he challenged her. "After all, it's no fun being cast away on a desert island if the first thing you see is a man in corduroy trousers smoking a pipe and reading the 'Grandwycke Visitors' Directory.' Let's have a look at the lighthouse."

The platform at th© top of the lighthouse, which was reached by a very steep and twisted stairway, gave a new of the beaches along both sides of the island. The lantern had gone, but the frame that had held it threw a grateful patch of shade. -It was here that they eat for a long time on a steel trestle and discovered the delightful game of pretending that there was no chance of being rescued for at least twenty years. There must somewhere be a spring of fresh water, for even a hermit was not likely to deny himself the occasional luxury of a drink. The sheep and their descendants would provide meat and clothing; but for fuel and vegetables they would have to rely on Providence, which is known to be kind to shipwrecked mariners. It was several hours later that Audrey, rummaging in the bottom of the lighthouse, made a discovery. "We're saved!" she announced, rushing back to the lantern-frame. "Why?" "I've found some oars." "Bother!" said John. "But don't you want to get back?" "Not in the least. In fact, I was reckoning on another nineteen years and three hundred and sixty-four days. This is precisely my idea of happiness." But if Audrey had felt an almost imperceptible shadow of disappointment when she found the oars, she had easily 1 overcome it. Running away with John Evershot had its points, but Providence seemed to have indicated plainly that it was time to go home. The September afternoon was passing into evening, and the sun had disappeared behind a big black cloud that had crept up stealthily from the east. "Save your breath for rowing home," she commanded when he began to plead for delay. "Why, what's the matter?" His expression of blank surprise and dismay made her follow his glance. The beach along which he was looking was as deserted as ever, and she could see no cause for alarm, except the growing greyness of the sea and the white patches that here and there flecked the top of a swell. "What on earth are you looking at?" she cried impatiently. "Don't pretend that you can see the ghost of the hermit, because I shan't believe you." ( "It isn't that," said Evershot quietly. "But—well, look along the beach." "I'm looking," said Audrey. "And I can see it all. And it's as empty as ever." r J , '7* isn 't." he contradicted her. Its emptier. Don't you miss anything. J "The boat!" said Audrey. "Oh drat you must be making a mistake. That isnt the beach we landed on. It was round the other side." And though she knew that she was wrong, and knew that he knew, they raced each other over the low headland that cut off their view of the beach on' the further side of tha island. Audrey arrived first and stood panting. Clearly tins was not the beach that had received them from the deep. Nor was there any trace of a boat along tbe whole croaoentj

of foam, now edging a sea that had turned a sullen grey with the disappearance of the sun. She turned slowly and rejoined him. " "This adventure," she declared, "has ceased to amuse mc." Evershot, too, seemed unwontedly subdued. It is true that a boat without oars had seemed small comfort a league from the mainland with every promise of a storm before nightfall. But there had been at the back of both their minds a vague conviction that somehow or other the nutshell which bad so gently landed them here would manage to get them back again. And this blind faith in the boat grew stronger now that the boat was gone. For there was no doubt about is. A circular tour of the island brought home the fact that the boat was gone without leaving so much as a trace of its descent of the beach where it had been dragged to a point which had seemed to both of them to be far beyond the reach of the highest tide. No doubt it had glided away as gently as it came, after ridding itself of its unwelcome passengers, and had resumed its journey to South Africa. "We must burn something," said Evershot mournfully. "We must collect driftwood and make a bonfire. Thank heaven I always carry at least three boxes of matches. We must go along the beach in different directions. If you find a piece that's too heavy for you to move you'd better shout for mc and I'll come and help you." At the end of ten minutes Audrey shouted. But it was not because she had found the figure head of a wrecked galleon, or any other likely piece of timber. It was because she had found just nothing at all. "No wonder they did away with the lighthouse," she said wearily. "It can't have paid them to keep it up. It doesn't look as if there's been a wreck here for centuries." "I've found seven pieces of wood," declared'Evershot with attempted cheerfulness. - "But I'm afraid six of them are rather wet. If only we had the boat we might have broken it up and burnt it." "Happy thought!" said Audrey. "And you're rather good at burning boats, aren't you?" But he looked so humble that she wished she hadn't said it, and might even have apologised if a sudden idea had not driven the impulse away. "I have it," she cried. "What?" he asked doubtfully. "Wood, of course. Tons of it! Fiftysix whole chunks, to say nothing of the banisters. Back to the lighthouse!" And she raced off again. For a moment she had a horrible fear that she had made a mistake, and that the spiral stairway of the lighthouse was built of iron. But she proved to be right, at least in part. The handrail by which one hauled oneself up the fifty-six steps of the lighthouse was of wrought iron, but the steps were of wood—wood in solid masses, polished by constant use, and worn to a special shine in the middle by the countless ascents and descents of the lighthouse men, to whom running up and down stairs must have been the principal recreation that the island afforded. She turned and waved triumphantly. "What luck!" gasped Evershot. "I thought they always built these places of iron. But I suppose it's a very old lighthouse. Shall I start at the top or at the bottom?" Audrey considered the staircase with an air of proprietorship. "You'd better start at the top," she decided. "Then when you've broken up one stair you_ can come down to the next. I'd better come up with you. They may take a bit of shifting."" They took a good deal of shifting, even with the help of an iron crowbar which they found stowed away in the locker under the stairs—the second gift that Providence had seen fit to make to her distressed children. It was ten minutes before the plank that crowned the uppermost stair yielded with a mighty crack, and another ten before it could be prised out of the framework in which it was embedded. "A stair and a-ihalf," panted Audrey three-quarters of an hour later. "I wonder how many we shall need?" "At least a dozen," declared Evershot, relaxing with something between a sigh and a grpan. "I wish the sun would come out again. It's getting infernally dark in here." Audrey hoisted herself to the little platform to which no one would ever climb again, and looked round the grey 6emi-circle of sea just in time to see the last red tip of the sun disappearing beneath the water. "The beast!" she cried. "He. gone and set. Oh, come and look!" As the blowing ember sank into the sea she had turned her back on it. And there, facing the sunset across leagues of steel-grey water, there appeared above the horizon another point of fire, like a reflection of the first. But this, in a moment, disengaged itself from the water and widened into a broad beam ol sullen red, like a bar of molten iron floating miraculously on the Channel—and the ingot in its turn was enlarged into a-golden-red bowl, inverted on the surface of the sea. The harvest moot was rising. Away on her left, across three miles of water and a mile and a-half of land, the moment had come for the opening of the great gates of Easings Park. For Eatings Fair had from time immemorial begun at the rising of the moon. The great farm wagon, loaded high with sheaves and drawn by four shire horses with gaily-ribboned manes and tails, would be timed to arrive at the proper moment. But sometimes it would be too soon, and the horses would have to stand idle, before the shut gates, stamping and chewing their bits until the rising of the moon. Then the gates would swing back and they would plunge through, followed by the impatient stream of merry-makers; they tooor half of them, decked in their best ribbons, and escorted by self-conscious swains in stiffly creased broadcloth. "She'll never forgive mc," murmured Audrey, under her breath. "I shall never shift this one," grunted John, putting all his weight on the crowbar in vain. "I'll help," said Audrey, and joined her eight stone to his ten and a half. But the stair remained whole. They sat down and faced the compelling arithmetic of the situation. If the demolishing of a stair and a half occupied one hour, or thereabouts, how long would it take to demolish twelve stairs? "It takes us to about sunrise," decided Audrey. "But can we work in the dark?" objected Evershot. "I suppose not. And even if we could the fire wouldn't be much use in daylight." "Which means that we've got to work at it all day to-morrow, and light our beacon as soon as it gets dark to-morrow night." "Oh, but that won't do," declared the girl decisively. "You see. I've got to be at the fete. There'll be a frightful rumpus if I'm not there." " It n can * t °* done '" Baid the young man

"I tell you I must be there. And so must you. Have you forgotten that you've promised to choose the Harvest Queen. Think how disappointed she'd be." "Who? The Contessinat" "No, of course not. I mean Miss Standing." "I'd forgotten for the moment," said Evershot, "that such a person existed." "Your privations are turning your brain," said Audrey, with a transient blush. "Now will you please sit perfectly quiet for a minute or two. I want to think." Supper in the tithe barn and the two big marquees in the meadow was timed for an hour after moonrise. But it was a moveable feast, for everything depended on the ox. The art of roasting oxen whole has fallen into lamentable decay, and, though the carcase had been turning for an hour before the gates opened, the turnspits could not give any definite forecast as to when 4 would take that final turn to which they could declare it done. So it happened that supper was three-quarters of an hour late, and a vast number of logs had spluttered and flared before the beast was declared to be well and truly roasted. Fortunately the rain held off until the crucial moment was passed, but the clouds had been gathering darkly overhead for some time, reflecting the glare lof the fire, so that people on distant hillI sides, forgetting the fete, concluded that ithere was a house or a haystack burning.

But it was a companion glare out at sea that set watchers gaping along twenty miles of coast. It came just as the fire at Easings was beginning to die down—a tall thin pillar of flame, shooting skywards from the heart of the Channel. Experts judged it to be three miles out, and at least eighty feet high—so tall that it was hard to believe that it could spring from the destruction of the tallest schooner, and withal so narrow and so short-lived that it clearly could be no great vessel that was blazing. Immediately a rocket sped up from the head of Grandwycke jetty, and burst against the sombre clouds—the wellknown signal for the crew of the lifeboat to run to their posts. "Lucky that we found that turpentine," gasped Audrey, drawing a fist across her smarting eyes. .' "I believe we could have done without it," said John. "You see, a lighthouse is a natural furnace. Get the bottom stair alight and the draught does the rest." "But we couldn't have done without the paper," said the girl reflectively. "How did you come to have such masses of it in your pocket?" "Oh, that?" said John carelessly. "That was only the first two chapters of my new novel. Now let's sit down and wait for something to happen." (To be continued Saturday next.)