The British Mysteries Edition: 14 Novels & 70+ Short Stories. Sapper
what I was going to do. He held on to the rope, and as I sprang at him he straightened up instinctively. And with all my force I pushed him in the back.
It was enough. He was off his balance, and with a fearful curse, still clinging on to the rope, he swung out himself over the shaft.
"Hold on, Jim!" I roared. "Hold on!"
For I saw at once that luck had held—Cornish was a heavier man than Jim. For a perceptible time he hung there swaying, his blue eyes almost frenzied in their animal rage and the scar on his face a livid purple. Then slowly but steadily his weight told, and he began to sink down and down. And with every foot he fell Jim came up. For a while Cornish tried to climb, but he could make no headway. And Jim was climbing, too, and getting the double advantage. And then I think it crossed Cornish's mind to cut the rope on Jim's side, until he realised that once the counter weight was gone he must fall himself. They passed two hundred odd feet below the level of the ground, and Cornish tried to grab Jim's leg. But he kicked himself free, coming up quicker and quicker as the acceleration increased. And then suddenly I heard his voice shouting, urgently:
"Check the rope, Dick—check it somehow!"
For a moment I couldn't understand his reason, but I scrambled out along the beam to the pulley. I used a piece of wood as a brake, and then I saw Jim's plan. He was still fifty feet below me, swaying dizzily, but as the rope checked with the brake and finally stopped, he got the part of it on Cornish's side of the pulley with one hand. Gradually he got both ropes into that hand—shifting his legs to help the strain. And then with his free hand he got out his clasp-knife.
He opened it with his teeth, and Cornish from the depths below realised what was happening. He started frenziedly shooting up the shaft, heedless now of whether he died or not, provided he got Jim too. But he was swaying too much, and the end was quick. Jim cut the rope on Cornish's side below the place where he had both returns gripped in his other hand. And once again there came that dreadful dull noise which echoed faintly and then died away.
Half a minute later, using the two ends of the rope as one, Jim reached the pulley beam, and scrambled into safety. And then, for the first time in his life, Jim Maitland fainted.
* * * * *
Later on we walked to the next township, with Yellow Sam in front of us carrying our bags. We gave him to the inhabitants, with our love, and I believe they hanged him, though the point is not of great importance. The man who had called himself Pete Cornish was more dangerous than twenty Yellow Sams, and in his case the hangman had been saved the trouble. Who he really was is a mystery, for the man talked and spoke like a gentleman. There were some who said that he had been the illegitimate son of a well-known peer famed in his day for wild living and enormous strength. Others there were who maintained that he was the direct descendant of a famous pirate who had ended his days in Botany Bay, after a career of unbelievable ferocity. Who knows? But whatever may be the truth, the one unforgettable picture of him that lives in my mind is just two staring implacable light-blue eyes swinging backwards and forwards and then gradually sinking to the death he had planned for us.
VII. — THE MADMAN AT CORN REEF LIGHTHOUSE
IF you lie on the close-clipped turf that stretches between Beachy Head and Biding Gap, not too far from the edge of the white chalk cliffs, you will see below you the lighthouse. It stands out in the sea some two hundred yards from the base of the cliff, and every few seconds with monotonous regularity, once dusk has fallen, the beam from the revolving light will shine on you and then pass on, sweeping over the grey water below. A dangerous part of the coast, that one-time haunt of smugglers, till the lighthouse made it safe.
There are treacherous currents and shoals; but the worst is when the sea wrack comes gently drifting over the Downs and lies like a great grey blanket over the sea below. Then that sweeping light is useless, and every two or three minutes comes the sound of a maroon from the lighthouse—a sound which is answered by the mournful wailing of sirens out to sea, as vessels creep slowly through the fog. Like great monsters out of the depths they wail dismally at one another and pass unseen, their sirens growing fainter and fainter in the distance.
Only the roar of the maroons from the lighthouse goes on unchanged, while the grey fog eddies gently by, making fantastic figures as it drifts. Implacable and silent, it seems to mock such paltry man-made efforts to fight it, and yet there are amazingly few accidents, even in that crowded shipping area. The effort may be man-made, but it is successful.
It depends, however, for its success upon the man. Elaborate your mechanical devices as you will, introduce the most complicated automatic machinery to control the regular sweep of the light and the monotonous explosion of the maroons, it all comes back finally to the man who lives in that tall, slender building rising out of the water. A dreary life to which not many men are suited; a life where strange thoughts and fancies might come drifting into one's brain—drifting as gently and slowly as the grey wisps of fog outside. And after a while some might remain, even though outside the fog has gone, and the water shines blue again in the sunlight. It is that way that danger lies. In the crowded waterways where inspectors are many and inspections numerous, the risk is small. Moreover, in the crowded waterways the loneliness is not so great.
But there are others where from month's end to month's end a man will see no soul save the other fellow who lives with him; where save for the occasional visit of a boat with supplies there is nothing to break the deadly monotony. Sometimes even there is no other fellow; the man is alone. And strange things may happen if then those drifting thoughts and fancies come and take root. When faces float past, pressing for a moment against the glass, and then are gone; when voices unheard by the other man come clearly out of the night; when strange shapes materialise and gibber mockingly—there is danger ahead. The step between sanity and madness is not a great one, and once it has been taken there is no safe return.
And Corn Reef was one of those others.
* * * * *
We were drifting homewards, though we neither of us admitted it in so many words, but we were drifting in our own way. Not for Jim the conventional P. and O.; his tastes, as always, were for the small coasting boat which called at unknown islands and dealt in strange cargoes. One went as far as one liked in her and then stopped and waited for something else. Which takes time, but has its advantages undreamt of by the occupants of the millionaire suites in big liners.
And so it happened that one day in the following spring we came back to Tampico, that island where I had first met him—that island which held the grave of the husband of the only woman who mattered to Jim. We took rooms in the hotel, and almost as if the words had been spoken aloud I heard again her voice bitter with unmeasured contempt: "Oh! you cur!" I think Jim heard it too, for suddenly he smiled at me a little bitterly.
"Is it much use going home, Dick?"
He didn't wait for my answer, but turned away with a shrug of his shoulders and went upstairs while I strolled down the street towards the club. Nothing had changed; nothing ever will change at Tampico. Each drunken derelict who dies is replaced sooner or later by another, which can hardly be accounted as change. And as for the club, I might have left it the day before instead of two years previously.
It was unoccupied save for one man, who glanced up as I came in, and then continued reading the letter he held in his hand. Every now and then he gave a little frown, and I looked at him covertly as I ordered a drink. There was that nameless something about him which marked him instantly as one of those thousands of Britishers who spend their lives in God-forsaken quarters of the globe carrying on the little job of Empire. They generally die of some disease, unknown and unthanked, or else they return to England in the fullness of time and sink into utter obscurity in some suburb of that Empire's capital. But while they're in harness they live, and when the harness drops off they don't mind dying. So perhaps it doesn't matter very much.
The native waiter brought me my drink, and with a three-months-old illustrated paper in my hand, I sat down and forgot about him. He