Australian Gothic. Marcus Clarke
said, as the shadows along the shore deepened into the overhanging bush; “my grip will not hold on the sculls.”
“You are the—coward!” the other muttered, as he rose and changed seats with Neilson, “and you have nearly half a gallon of spirits in you too. If I had as weak a liver as you I’m—if I would ever dip my fingers in anything thicker than muddy water.”
“I can’t help it, but God forbid that I should ever again feel the blood of a murdered man on my hands. More to the right, Dan—keep close to the bend to keep out of Connel Craig’s sight, his hut is just opposite.”
“Once more I say what is the use of bothering with this dead man? I could cut that Craig’s weaxand before half a grave could be dug. Say the word, Dick, and I’ll go ashore and do it.”
“No! no! I say, never again, never again, no more blood, never again!” and the miserable, trembling wretch half rose in his terror to stay the hand that would have directed the boat toward the opposite bank of the stream.
“Faugh!” he cried with disgust, as he shook off the limp hand of Neilson. “If ever a man deserved to die for his cowardice you do, and if I didn’t owe you more than one good turn I’d jolly quick leave you to do your own resurrection work. Waken up, man, and point out the place to me. How the deuce do you expect me to row there when I don’t know a foot of the way?”
“Steer for that fallen tree and run your boat up against it. The place is not fifty yards from that.”
Following these instructions the boat was soon fastened in the shadow of the log, and picks and shovels, with a dark lantern, a coil of rope, and a huge bottle, were taken from it to the land. It was in a wild spot of tangled scrub and fallen timber, and with great sprawling branches straggling out over it for many acres of uncultivated forest, through which Richard Neilson led the way with a desperate courage supplied him anew by a fresh attack at the spirits ere he left the boat.
In this tangle the shadows were deeper, and the spots which the moonlight reached through the straggling branches were few and far between, but they lay bright and full upon a green hillock as soft and rounded as though it had been raised on some sunny green lawn.
“This is the place,” whispered Neilson, “for I know it by that cut I put in the log; but who has dragged the branches from it, or planted the grass to grow so green?”
“The ghosts you talk about of course,” said Dan with a sneer. “Put down the rope and fall to work with your mouth shut, for the sooner this job is over the better it will be for us both.”
“How deep is it?” he asked again, when the mould had been flying from their shovels for some time. “Ah! You needn’t answer, I can see we are near from your white face. Get up, man, and take your shaking carcass out of that. I can’t bear the sight of you.”
Only too glad to obey the mandate, Neilson crawled out of the grave, while Whelan carefully scraped the soil from a rough coffin that had now become partly visible, and on which the strokes of the shovel sounded awfully in the murderer’s ears. Once Dan came up to the surface, and took a long pull at the big bottle before he went down again, carrying the coil of rope with him.
“Now the course is clear,” he cried, as he returned to his companion’s side. “Pull away at your rope, and we’ll have him up. Steady—steady. Hold fast! My end’s caught. All right. There we are!” And the clay-soiled box that hid its awful secret lay on the grass, while drops of agony fell heavily from the murderer’s face over his victim’s breast.
It was then, as it lay by the rifled grave which Whelan was rapidly filling up, that the curtain-like cloud that obscured our view from the tower window fell over the moon and blotted out its light. It was by the pale glimmer of stars that the two men bore their dread burden through the wood, and laid it in the bottom of the boat, and when they had shoved out once more into the stream it was Whelan who held the sculls, while Neilson had fallen weakly and speechlessly into the stern.
He did not seem to see anything but the awful object that lay at his feet, or to hear anything but the death groans of the man whose blood he had spilled treacherously. In vain his companion addressed words of inquiry. He did not speak, for the cold grip on his heart seemed to him the grasp of a dead man’s hand.
All at once he shuddered and looked up. Right before him on the slope above the river gleamed the starlike light in the tower window of the Moat House, and the rays from it appeared to point directly to him as he sat in the boat, with his rigid knees drawn up to avoid contact with the terrible coffin. Suddenly, and with a gasping breath, he started to his feet, and, dragging the nearest oar from Whelan’s grasp, waved it above his head frantically, as if about to strike his companion.
“You did it on purpose,” he shouted wildly, “you did it that I might see him again on the very spot where the water was red with his blood as he sank! My God, he is there, with his awful face and his glassy eyes staring at me!” and with an awful cry of agonised despair, Neilson dropped the oar and fell backwards into the water.
A horrible imprecation grated from between Whelan’s teeth as he tried to steady the boat that was nearly overturned by the sudden disappearance of Neilson. On the spot where the miserable man had disappeared unsteady ripples spread circlingly and big bubbles arose and burst upon the surface, but the form whose struggles as he died must have moved the waters into unholy shapes never re-appeared on its surface again, though Dan’s eyes were strained in every direction to see and succour him. But all at once a sense of his own insecurity overwhelmed him, as he heard distinctly the sound of horse’s feet on the road that skirted the river.
“A trooper’s horse, by Jove!” he muttered, “and here I am to account for two dead men. Curses on my luck! I’ll have to swim for it, or I’ll get into this job of Neilson’s myself!”
As he spoke he had slipped over the side of the boat, leaving it and its dread burden to drift helplessly where it listed, while he himself made his escape to Neilson’s now-deserted hut to secure a change of clothing and such money as he could find to help him in his further flight—for he was far on his way from Calandra when daylight broke over the Moat House.
Fair and sweet broke the morning around the Moat House, with the dewdrops glittering on the verdurous river banks, and the sparkling water rippling along the sedges by the cool, refreshing breeze of early day. Connel Craig rowing leisurely down the river and thinking of his interview of yesterday with Richard Neilson, felt uneasy as he looked toward the tower and saw its window open, and a faded curtain flapping outside it in the soft wind.
“That Dick will come to no good end, and I am a fool to trust him,” he was thinking; “yet I can’t bear to get him into such heavy trouble after hiding it so long.”
Thus as he was looking up toward the tower and the curtain flapping in the open window, and then, as he was getting too far in shore, he plied one oar and turned his head over his shoulder to see his course, what he did see was the awful boat of the previous night, as it drifted strangely to and fro, yet scarcely ever left for many yards the spot from which Richard Neilson had fallen.
The astonished man made a few strokes and then drew in his oars.
“It’s Neilson’s boat,” he said aloud, though there was no living man to hear him. “What can have happened?” And then his eyes caught sight of the oar the man had dropped in his last horrible vision of his victim; it was lying against a bed of sedges, whose sad rustling might have been the whisper of ghostly voices mourning for the sins of men.
“What can have happened?” Craig repeated, as his boat sidled up to the other, and he rose to his feet and looked into the unmanned boat, where he saw the rough coffin with the damp clay yet clinging to its sides, and the horrified man fell back with a dread cry as he recognised it; for it was his own hands that had rudely put its boards together.
“The hand of Heaven is in it,” he gasped, “for it has come back to the very spot from whence I dragged it myself!”
We were at breakfast at the Camp when Craig, whose face was white as ashes, came into the room. I