The shadow of the sword

"Rohan, Rohan! Can you not hear me call? It is time to go. Come, come! It frightens me to look down at you. Will you not come up now, Rohan?"

The voice that cries is lost in the ocean-sound that fills the blue void beneath; it fades away far under, amid a confused murmur of wings, a busy chattering of innumerable little newborn mouths; and while the speaker, drawing dizzily back, feels the ground rise up beneath her feet and the cliffs prepare to turn over like a great wheel, a human cry comes upward, clear yet faint, like a voice from the sea that washes on the weedy reefs of blood-red granite a thousand feet below.

The sun is sinking far away across the waters, sinking with a last golden gleam amid the mysterious Hesperides of the silent air, and his blinding light comes slant across the glassy calm till it strikes on the scarred and storm-rent faces of these Breton crags, illuminating and vivifying every nook and cranny of the cliffs beneath, burning on the summits and brightening their natural red to the vivid crimson of dripping blood, changing the coarse grass and yellow starwort into threads of emerald and glimmering stars, burning in a golden mist around the yellow flowers of the overhanging broom, and striking with fiercest ray on one naked rock of solid stone which juts out like a huge horn over the brink of the abyss, and around which a strong rope is noosed and firmly knotted.

Close to this horn of rock, in the full glory of the sunset light, stands a young girl, calling aloud to one who swings unseen below.

The sunlight flashes full into her face and blinds her, while the soft breath of the sea kisses the lids of her dazzled eyes.

Judged by her sun-tanned skin, she might be the daughter of some gipsy tribe. But such dark features as hers are common among the Celtic women of the Breton coast; and her large eyes are not gipsy-black, but ethereal grey--that mystic colour which can be soft as heaven with joy and love, but dark as death with jealousy and wrath; and, indeed, to one who gazes long into such eyes as these, there are revealed strange depths of passion, and self-control, and pride. The girl is tall and shapely, somewhat slight of figure, small-handed, small-footed; so that, were her cheek a little less rosy, her hands a little whiter, and her step a little less elastic, she might be a lady born.

It is just eighteen years to-day since that red blustering morning when her father, running into port with the biggest haul of fish on record that season in the little fishing village, found that the Holy Virgin, after giving him four strong sons had at last deposited in his marriage bed a maid-child, long prayed for, come at last; and the maid's face is still beautiful with the unthinking innocence of childhood. Mark the pretty, almost petulant mouth, with the delicious underlip--

"Some bee hath stung it newly!"

Woman she is, yet still a child; and surely the sun, that touches this moment nearly every maiden cheek in every village for a hundred miles along this stormy coast, shines upon no sweeter thing.

Like Queen Bertha of old she bears in her hand a distaff, but not even a queen's dress, however fair, could suit her better than the severe yet picturesque garb of the Breton peasant girl--the modest white coif, the blue gown brightly bordered with red, the pretty apron enwrought with flowers in coloured thread, the neat bodice adorned with a rosary and medal of Our Lady; and finally, the curious sabots, or wooden shoes.

"Rohan, Rohan!"

A clear bird-like voice, but it is lost in the murmur of the blue void below.

The girl puts down her distaff beside a pair of sabots and a broad felt hat which lie already on one of the blocks of stone; then, placing herself flat upon her face close to the very edge of the cliff, and clasping with one hand the rope which is suspended from the horn of rock close to her, she peers downward.

Half-way down the precipice a figure, conscious of her touch upon the rope, by which he is partially suspended, turns up to her a shining face, and smiles.

She sees for a minute the form that hovers beneath her in mid-air, surrounded by a flying cloud of ocean birds--she marks the white beach far below her, and the red stains of the weedy pools above the tide, and the cream-white edge of the glassy moveless sea--she feels the sun shining, the rocks gleaming, for a little space;--then her head goes round, and she closes her eyes with a little cry. A clear ringing laugh floats up to her and reassures her. She plucks up heart and gazes once again.

What a depth! She turns dizzy anew as she looks into it, but presently the brain-wave passes away, and her head grows calm. She sees all now distinct and clear, but her eyes rest on one picture only!--not on the crimson reefs and granite rocks amidst which the placid ocean creeps, through fretwork of tangled dulse and huge crimson water-ferns; not on the solitary Needle of Gurlan, an enormous monolith of chalk and stone, standing several furlongs out in the sea, with the waves washing eternally round its base and a cloud of sea-fowl hovering ever about its crest; not on the lonely specks of rock, where the great black-backed gulls, dwarfed by distance to the size of white moths, sit gazing at the sunset, weary of a long day's fishing; not on the long line of green cormorants that are flapping drowsily home to roost across waters tinted purple and mother-of-pearl; not on the seals that swim in the dim green coves far beneath; not on the solitary red-sailed fishing boat that drifts along with the ebb a mile out to sea. All these she sees for a moment as in a magician's glass; all these vanish, and leave one vision remaining--the agile and intrepid figure just under her, treading the perpendicular crags like any goat, swinging almost out into mid-air as from time to time he bears his weight upon the rope, and moving lightly hither and thither, with feet and hands alike busy, the latter hunting for sea-birds' eggs.

Thick as foam-flakes around his head float the little terns; past him, swift as cannon-balls, the puffins whizz from their burrows (for the comic little sea-parrot bores the earth like a rabbit, before she lays her eggs in it like a bird), and sailing swiftly for a hundred yards, wheel, and come back, past the intruder's ears again, to their burrows once more; round and round, in a slow circle above his head, a great cormorant--of the black, not the green species--sails silently and perpetually, uttering no sound; and facing him, snowing the surface of the cliffs, sit the innumerable birds, with their millions of little eyes on his. The puffins on the green earthy spots, peering out with vari-coloured bills; the guillemots in earth and rock alike, wherever they can find a spot to rest an egg; the little dove-like tern; male and female, sitting like love-birds beak to beak, on the tiny little coignes of vantage on the solid rocks below the climber's feet. Of the numberless birds which surround him on every side, few take the trouble to stir, though those few make a perfect snow around him; but the air is full of a twittering and a trembling, and a chattering and rustling, which would drive a less experienced cragsman crazy on the spot. As he slips nimbly among them, they grumble a little in their bird fashion; that is all. Occasionally an infuriated would-be mother, robbed of her egg, makes belief to fly at his face, but quails at the first movement of his fowler's staff; and now and then an angry puffin, as his hand slips into her hole, clings to his finger like a parrot, is drawn out a ruffled wrath of feathers, and is flung shrieking away into the air.

The fowler's feet are naked--so his toes sometimes suffer from a random bite or peck, but his only answer is a merry laugh. He flits about as if completely unconscious of danger, or if conscious, as if the peril of the sport made it exhilarating tenfold.

It is exciting to see him moving about in his joyous strength amid the dizzy void, with the sunset burning on his figure, the sea sparkling beneath his feet. His head is bare; his hair, of perfect golden hue, floats to his shoulders, and is ever and anon blown into his face, but with a toss of his head he flings it behind him. The head is that of a lion; the throat, the chin, leonine; and the eyes, even when they sparkle as now, have the strange, far-away, visionary look of the king of animals. His figure, agile as it is, is herculean; for is he not a Gwenfern, and when, since the memory of a man, did a Gwenfern ever stand less than six feet in his sabots? Stripped of his raiment and turned to stone, he might stand for Heracles--so large of mould is he, so mighty of limb. But even in his present garb--the peasant dress of dark blue, shirt open at the throat, gaily-coloured sash, and trousers fastened at the knee with a knot of scarlet ribbon--he looks sufficiently herculean.

He plies his trade. Secured to his waist hangs a net of dark earth-coloured eggs, and it is nearly full.

The sunset deepens, its flashes grow more blinding as they strike on the reddened cliff but the fowler lifts up his eyes in the light, and sees the dark face of the maiden shining down upon him through the snow of birds.

"Rohan, Rohan!" she cries again.

He waves his fowler's staff and smiles, preparing to ascend.

"I am coming, Marcelle!" he calls.

And through the flying snow he slowly comes, till it is no longer snow around his head, but snow around his feet. Partly aided by the rope, partly by the hook of his fowler's staff, he clings with hands and feet, creeps from ledge to ledge, crawling steadily upward. Sometimes the loose conglomerate crumbles in his hands or beneath his feet, and he swings with his whole weight upon the rope; then for a moment his colour goes, from excitement, not fear, and his breath comes quickly. No dizziness with him! his calm blue eyes look upward and downward with equal unconcern, and he knows each footstep of his way. Slowly, almost laboriously, he seems to move, yet his progress is far more rapid than it appears to the eye, and in a few minutes he has drawn himself up the overhanging summit of the crag, reached the top, gripped the horn of rock with hands and knees, and swung himself on to the greensward, close to the girl's side.

All the prospect above the cliffs opens suddenly on his sight. The cloudy east is stained with deep crimson bars, against which the grassy hills, and fresh-ploughed fields, and the squares of trees whose foliage hides the crowning farms, stand out in distinct and beautiful lines.

But all he sees for the moment is the one dark face, and the bright eyes that look lovingly into his.

"Why will you be so daring, Rohan?" she inquires in a soft Breton patois. "If the rope should break, if the knot should slip, if you should grow faint! Gildas and Hoël both say you are foolish. St. Gurlan's Craig is not fit for a man to climb!"