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The Story of Wild Will Enderby

Chapter IV. The Heart of the Mystery

page 209

Chapter IV. The Heart of the Mystery.

Will's restoration to physical convalescence was rapid. Mentally, he was still perturbed, and discoursed incoherently, but there was less violence and more 'method in his madness.'

One day the bold Sergeant suddenly made his appearance in the sick chamber. Pratt suggested to him an immediate evacuation of the premises. The Sergeant stood his ground manfully.

"I am here in concordance with instructions," he said. "My instructions are to find out the state of the accused."

"Well, Sir, there he is, sleeping like a babe in the wood. Don't disturb him, Sir," whispered the Senior Partner. "It might bring back the crisis, and we don't want any more of that. Crisis don't agree with him very well. Come this road, if you please, and I'll expound to you. They keep very pretty liquor in this here caboose."

So saying, he edged him quietly out of the room, and eventually succeeded in persuading the Sergeant that his services were not required just yet.

When he returned to Will, that troublesome young person was sitting up in bed.

page 210

"I have heard everything," he said. "It must come, sooner or later. Better have it over at once. I did kill him, you know, Pratt."

The Senior Partner humoured his patient. "Of course you did," said he. "But do you know it rayther strikes this child as an uncommon strange thing, that you han't told us yet who you did kill. I ain't a morsel curious on my own account. No, Sir; only I should like to know. That's all."

"Give me a little water," said Will, "and I'll tell you all."

It was the 'lucid interval' prognosticated by the medico.

Will did tell all. He related a story coherent in its several parts, but so strange withal, that the Senior Partner may be excused for somewhat doubting the sanity of the relator.

And here, in substance, it is:—

On the eventful night when Pratt started in pursuit of the Prospectors, he was accompanied (as truly he informed the Coroner) by Will, for about a mile on the way. Will then returned to the tent, in pursuance of the arrangement arrived at, as hereinbefore narrated.

Now Will was still dissatisfied at the rôle assigned to him, and the habitual lack of self-control which was his 'most easily besetting sin,' produced the customary result. As he loitered along the road, half inclined to retrace his steps and follow his partner, he suffered negative displeasure to merge into positive anger; and thus, with corroding passion gnawing his heart, he approached the tent. As he came up to it, two men rushed therefrom. The first escaped by flight; the page 211second Will grappled with. Both were unarmed, and they were very fairly matched. The struggle was long and fierce. To and fro they swayed—they fell prone to earth, and rolled in the dust, and rose again to their feet, and shook each other fiercely; but never once did Will relax his grasp. Gradually—whether of design or by accident I know not—they approached the brink of the river. At one moment Will's antagonist held him almost suspended over the bank; but by a dexterous movement Will reversed their relative positions. Then, with a vigorous effort, he released himself from the fellow's grip, and thrust him headlong over.

The forceful impetus of the final struggle threw Will on his knees, and well-nigh carried him also over. A portion of his shirt sleeve was torn away by the last convulsive clutch of the falling wretch; his hat must have fallen over earlier in the contest.

For a brief space Will remained peering into the darkness. "Help!"—the cry appalled him. "Murder!"—the shriek paralysed his brain. He heard the thud, the plash; he marked the silence as of death that ensued. Then a great horror fell upon him. He turned and fled from the scene;—fled, he knew not—recked not whither, so only that he could shut out from his mind and memory the upturned face, pallid and fear-stricken, as he had seen it by the faint starlight, of the man whom in his wrath he had hurled to Eternity.

Behind the tent there was a deep gully, tortuous, precipitous, rock-strewn, running between high walls of stone far up the face of the mountains. Thitherward, half unconsciously, he directed his steps. Pant-page 212ing, perspiring, he wrought his way amidst numberless obstacles; stumbling, falling over rocks, bruising and wounding his limbs, but ever up and on again, feeling neither bruise nor wound in the fierce excitement of flight. The ghastly face seemed to peer out from every crevice in the mountain side,—to mock and mow and gibber at him. Nor one face alone, but many, and each with an accusing light in the staring eye-balls. And that last despairing cry—"Murder!"—The horrid sound pursued him. The blast that wailed amidst the desolate crags had tongues that repeated it. In vain he stopped his ears: that cry never ceased to penetrate his brain. In vain he closed his eyes: that face was ever present to his mental vision.

Accident afforded the relief which flight denied to him. As he climbed over some larger rocks his foot slipped, and he fell headlong to the ground, alighting on the back of his head. To his disordered imagination it seemed as if he had been stricken down by an invisible pursuer. The violence of the blow stunned him, and he lay insensible. Whilst in this condition sleep happily supervened, and sweet oblivion shielded him temporarily from the horrors of his waking moments.

When he awoke, the sun was already glinting on the peaks of the mountains, and the Cairn and the Obelisk were rose-tinted and resplendent in the early dawn. He found himself lying amidst a confused pile of rocks, the débris of a fallen cliff; and at first he failed to realize the position, or to recall the circumstances that had brought him thither. Suddenly all the horrors of the night recurred to him, and for an infinitesimal page 213fraction of time his heart seemed to stand still. Then it leaped up with unnatural violence, and the blood, coursing furiously through the veins, so pressed upon the brain as to endanger sanity and life.

A nameless terror oppressed him;—a terror which he had not resolution to analyze, nor courage to combat. And therewithal a thought came which not only gave him the solace of hope, but also furnished him with a motive for action. If he could but find his American friend! He could advise him, shelter him, save him. He rose up from his dank couch, half dazed and wholly cowed, and struck across country. All he knew was, that Pratt had gone in the upward direction of the Molyneux. And so—the river, everywhere visible from the ranges, being his guide—he hurried on. Through the calm, cool morning, through the weary noon-tide, through the descending shades of night, through the pitiless pelting of the storm, he held on his course with unfaltering perseverance, half begotten of his ardent temperament—half forced upon him by the instinct of self-preservation.

And thus it chanced that at eventide he found himself at the Lonely Hut on the shores of Lake Hawea.

"Can you picture the man, anyway, pardner?" asked the Senior.

"Picture him? Yes—only too well. I see his face now as I saw it that night. It is always before me—fearfully, vividly present. I never can—I never shall cease to see it."

And he lapsed into a paroxysm of irrelevancy.

"Guess I wouldn't know the critter by that description—not if I saw him in a pound."