The Green Ray/Chapter XXI

CHAPTER XXI. A TEMPEST IN A CAVERN.
was safe and sound, and, for the moment, out of danger. The darkness of the cavern was so great that he could see nothing of the interior. Only a dim twilight penetrated between the intervals of the waves, when the entrance was left partially clear.

Nevertheless, Sinclair endeavoured his utmost to see where Miss Campbell could have found a refuge. But in vain.

“Miss Campbell! Miss Campbell!” he shouted.

No words can depict his feelings when he heard a voice answering him,—

“Mr. Sinclair! Mr. Sinclair!”

Miss Campbell was alive!

But where could she be out of reach of the billows?

Crawling along the footpath, Sinclair went all round the end of the cavern.

Pages 284-285 missing from scans. Following paragraphs are translated by the contributor.

In the wall on the left, a shriking of basalt had created an anfractuosity, hollowed out as a nich. There, the pillars had been separated. The tiny room, broad at it opening, narrowed so as to leave place for only one person. The legend gave to this hole the name “armchair of Fingal.”

It was in the tiny room that Miss Campbell, surprised by the invasion of the sea, had taken refuge.

Some hours earlier, with the tide descending, entry to the cave was easily practicable, and there the imprudent one had come to make her daily visit. There, deep in her daydreams, she did not suspect the danger threatened by the rising tide, and she had not observed anything that occurred outside. When she wanted to leave, what was her fear, when she could no longer find an exit through this invasion of water!

Miss Campbell did not lose her head, however, and she sought to place herself in the shelter. After two or three vain attempts to reach the outside, she could, after trying twenty times, reach this armchair of Fingal.

It is there that Oliver Sinclair found her huddled up, out of the range of the heavy swells.

“Ah! Miss Campbell!” he exclaimed, “how you were imprudent enough to expose you thus, at the beginning of the tempest! We believed you were lost!”

“And you came to save me, Mr. Oliver,” answered Miss Campbell, more touched by the courage of the young man than the dangers which could still happen.

“I came to take you from a bad place, Miss Campbell, and I will succeed with the aid of God!”

“You are not afraid?”

“I am not afraid… No!… Since you are there, I do not fear anything any more… And, moreover, can I have another feeling of admiration in front of such a spectacle!… Look!”

Miss Campbell had moved herself back into the tiny room. Oliver Sinclair, upright in front of it, sought to shelter it as best he could, when the furiously rising swell threatened to reach it.

The two kept silent. Oliver Sinclair did not need words to comprehend! What good is words to express all that Miss Campbell felt?

However, the young man viewed with an inexpressible anguish, not for himself, but for Miss Campbell, the increasing threats from outside. To hear the howls of the wind, the crashes of the sea, did he understand that the storm was breaking with an increasing fury? Did he see the level of the water rising with the tide, which was still to increase for several hours?

Where would the rise of the sea stop, to which the broad swell was giving an abnormal height? One could not envisage, but, what was only too visible, is that slowly the cave was filling up. If the darkness was not complete, it was that the crests of the waves were impregnated with light from outside, and, besides this, large sheets of phosphorus cast a kind of electric glare on the diamond-shaped prisms of the basaltic columns, and reflected a vague, livid light.

End of missing pages and translation by contributor.

During those rapid gleams, Oliver Sinclair turned towards Miss Campbell, and looked at her with emotions not altogether evoked by the danger around them.

She was gazing in rapture at this sublime spectacle of a tempest in a cavern!

At that moment a wave, higher than the rest, dashed right up to the recess of Fingal's armchair, and Sinclair feared that they would both be swept from their place of refuge.

He held the young girl in his arms, as though she were a prey which the sea would have snatched from him.

“Oliver! Oliver!” cried Miss Campbell, losing her self-possession in a moment of terror.

“Don't be alarmed, Helena!” replied Sinclair. “I will protect you, Helena!—I—”

He said he would protect her! But how? How could he shelter her from the violence of the waves if their fury increased, if the water rose still higher, and made their present place of refuge untenable? What other place was there to afford a shelter from this terrific crashing and leaping of water? All these contingencies passed before him in their terrible reality.

Self-possession was all-important, and Sinclair resolutely determined to maintain his composure.

And well he might, all the more so, as the young girl's physical, if not moral, strength must give way before long. Exhausted by the wearying struggles, reaction would soon set in. Sinclair already felt that she was growing gradually weaker. He endeavoured to reassure her, although he had himself given up all hope.

“Helena—my dear Helena!” he murmured, “on my return to Oban—I learnt—that it was, thanks to you—that I was saved from the Gulf of Coryvrechan!”

“Oliver—you knew it?” replied Miss Campbell, in a stifled voice.

“Yes—and I will show my gratitude to-day!—I will bring you safely out of Fingal's Cave.”

How dare Sinclair speak of safety, when the sea was dashing right up to the niche? He could only partially shelter his companion from its fury, and once or twice was himself almost swept off—only resisting the force of the water with an almost superhuman effort, feeling Helena's arms tightly clasped round him, and knowing that she, too, must have been carried off with him.

It must have been about half-past nine in the evening when the tide was at its highest, and the billows were surging into the cavern with the impetuosity of an avalanche; they broke with a deafening roar against the sides of the rock, and such was their fury, that every now and then pieces of the basalt became detached and fell, making dark circles in the phosphorescent sheets of foam. Would the colunms themselves gradually crumble away before the indescribable fury of this onslaught? Might not even the roof of the vault fall in?

Sinclair could not quiet these harrowing thoughts; he felt an irresistible torpor creeping over him, which he tried in vain to shake off, and which was occasioned by the want of air, at times; for, although it came in abundantly with the waves, they seemed to draw it all out again as they swept back from the cavern. Helena's strength was exhausted, and she became unconscious.

“Oliver!—Oliver!” she murmured, as she swooned away in his arms.

Oliver was crouching with the young girl in the farthest comer of the recess; he felt her cold, inanimate form, and endeavoured to chafe her with the little strength left him. Already the water was up to his waist, and if he, too, lost consciousness, it would be all over with them both!

The gallant young man held out for several hours longer. He supported Miss Campbell in his arms, and shielded her as best he could from the shock of the waves—and this in total darkness—for there was not even a gleam of phosphorescent light visible now, and in the midst of the continuous thundering and roaring of the tempest. It was no longer the voice of Selma which resounded in the palace of Fingal! It was the frightful barking of the dogs of Kamtschatka, which, says Michalet, “roam about in bands of thousands during the long nights, howling furiously at the roaring of the North Sea!”

At last the tide began to go down. Sinclair noticed that with the lowering of the water the waves grew less furious. The darkness in the cavern was so intense, that outside it seemed comparatively light, and in this obscurity the entrance to the cavern, no longer obstructed by the surging of the billows, could be dimly seen. Ere long the mists of night alone besieged the armchair of Fingal, the waves ceased to curl round them with treacherous fury. Hope once again revived in Sinclair's breast.

By calculating the time which had elapsed since high tide, he knew that it must be past midnight. Two hours more, and the footway would be clear of the foaming breakers, and would then be practicable. For this event he waited, peering eagerly through the darkness, and at last he was rewarded.

The moment to leave the cave had come.

Miss Campbell, meanwhile, had not recovered consciousness. Sinclair took her inanimate form in his arms; then carefully descending from their place of refuge, he groped along the narrow ledge of rock, the iron hand-rail of which had been twisted and torn away by the heavy seas.

As the waves now and again swept towards him, he stood still for a moment, or drew back a step.

At last, just as he had reached the entrance of the cavern, a great wave broke right over them—he thought that they must have been crushed against the rock, or hurled into the foaming abyss below.

By a supreme effort, he managed to retain his footing, and, taking advantage of the retreating wave, he rushed out of the cave.

In a moment he had reached the angle of the cliffs, where the brothers, Partridge, and Dame Bess, who had now joined them, had remained all the night.

They were saved!

But this paroxysm of moral and physical energy, to which Oliver Sinclair had worked himself up, suddenly abandoned him, and after giving Miss Campbell into Dame Bess's arms, he fell exhausted at the foot of the rocks. Had it not been for his courageous devotion, Helena would never have come out of Fingal's cave alive.

Le Rayon vert/Chapitre XXI Promień zielony/Rozdział XXI