CHAPTER IV. THE RUNNING SANDS. The Ship of Stars | ||
04. CHAPTER IV.
THE RUNNING SANDS.
He awoke to find the sun shining in at his window. At first he wondered what had happened. The window seemed to be in the ceiling, and the ceiling sloped down to the walls, and all the furniture had gone astray into wrong positions. Then he remembered, jumped out of bed, and drew the blind.
He saw a blue line of sea, so clearly drawn that the horizon might have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore, the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all, white gulls wheeling. He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they sailed over the house.
Taffy had seen the sea once before, at Dawlish,
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice.
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
Taffy found the table laid, and his mother busily slicing bread for his bread and milk. He begged for a hot cake from the hearth, and ran out of doors to eat it. Humility lifted the latch for him, for the cake was so hot that he had to pass it from hand to hand.
Outside, the wind came upon him with a clap on the shoulder, quite as if it had been a comrade waiting.
Taffy ran down the path and out upon the sandy hummocks, setting his face to the wind and the roar of the sea, keeping his head low, and still shifting the cake from hand to hand. By-and-by he fumbled and dropped it; stooped to pick it up, but saw something which made him kneel and peer into the ground.
The whole of the sand was moving; not by fits and starts, but constantly; the tiny particles running over each other and drifting in and out of the rushes, like little creatures in a dream. While he looked, they piled an embankment against the edge of his cake. He picked it up, ran forward a few yards, and peered again. Yes, here too; here and yonder, and over every inch of that long shore.
He ate his cake and climbed to the beach,
He began a sort of game with the waves, choosing one station after another, and challenging them to catch him there. If the edge of froth failed to reach his toes, he won. But once or twice the water caught him fairly, and ran rippling over his instep and about his ankles.
He was deep in this game when he heard a horn blown somewhere high on the towans behind him.
He turned. No one was in sight. The house lay behind the sand-banks, the first ridge hiding even its chimney-smoke. He gazed along the beach, where the perpetual haze of spray seemed
He pounded up the first slope and looked for the cottage. No sign of it! An insane fancy seized him. These silent moving sands were after him.
He was panting along in real distress when he heard the baying of dogs, and at the same instant from the top of a hummock caught sight of a figure outlined against the sky, and barely a quarter of a mile away; the figure of a girl on horseback--a small girl on a very tall horse.
Just as Taffy recognised her, she turned her horse, walked him down into the hollow beyond, and disappeared. Taffy ran towards the spot, gained the ridge where she had been standing, and looked down.
In a hollow about twenty feet deep and perhaps a hundred wide were gathered a dozen riders, with five or six couples of hounds and two or three dirty terriers. Two of the men had dismounted. One of these, stripped to his shirt and
The boy came on them from the eastward, and his shadow fell across the hollow.
"Hullo!" said one of the riders, looking up. It was Squire Moyle himself. "Here's the new Passon's boy!"
All the riders looked up. The Whip looked up too, and turned to the old Squire with a wider grin than before.
"Shall I christen en, maister?"
The Squire nodded. Before Taffy knew what it meant, the man was climbing toward him with a grin, clutching the rush bents with one hand, and holding out the blood-dabbled mask with the other. The child turned to run, but a hand clutched his ankle. He saw the man's open mouth and yellow teeth; and, choking with disgust
"You--you devils!" He caught up the visgy and stood, daring all to come on. "You devils!" He tottered forward with the visgy lifted--it was all he could manage--at Squire Moyle. The old man let out an oath, and the curve of his whip-thong took the boy across the eyes and blinded him for a moment, but did not stop him. The grey horse swerved, and half-wheeled, exposing his flank. In another moment there would have been mischief; but the Whip, as he stood wiping his mouth, saw the danger and ran in. He struck the visgy out of the child's grasp, set his foot on it, and with an open-handed cuff sent him floundering into a sand-heap.
"Nice boy, that!" said somebody, and the whole company laughed as they walked their horses slowly out of the hollow.
They passed before Taffy in a blur of tears; and the last rider to go was the small girl Honoria on her tall sorrel. She moved up the broad shelving path, but reined up just within sight, turned her horse, and came slowly back to him.
"If I were you, I'd go home." She pointed in its direction.
Taffy brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. "Go away. I hate you--I hate you all!"
She eyed him while she smoothed the sorrel's mane with her riding-switch.
"They did it to me three years ago, when I was six. Grandfather called it 'entering' me."
Taffy kept his eyes sullenly on the ground. Finding that he would not answer, she turned her horse again and rode slowly after the others. Taffy heard the soft footfalls die away, and when he looked up she had vanished.
He picked up his boots and started in the direction to which she had pointed. Every now and then a sob shook him. By-and-by the chimneys of the house hove in sight among the ridges, and he ran toward it. But within a gunshot of the
"Taffy! Taffy! Whatever has become of the child?"
His mother was standing by the gate in her print frock. He scrambled up and ran toward her. She cried out at the sight of him, but he hid his blood-smeared face against her skirts.
CHAPTER IV. THE RUNNING SANDS. The Ship of Stars | ||