The Moonstone - Page 135/404

The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight of

the place where she had perished.

With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see things

about me, as things really were. Looking towards the sand-hills, I saw

the men-servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland,

all running down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm,

calling out to know if the girl had been found. In the fewest words, the

Sergeant showed them the evidence of the footmarks, and told them that

a fatal accident must have happened to her. He then picked out the

fisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about again

towards the sea: "Tell me," he said. "Could a boat have taken her off,

in such weather as this, from those rocks where her footmarks stop?"

The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and

to the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on

either side of us.

"No boat that ever was built," he answered, "could have got to her

through THAT."

Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the foot-marks on the sand,

which the rain was now fast blurring out.

"There," he said, "is the evidence that she can't have left this place

by land. And here," he went on, looking at the fisherman, "is the

evidence that she can't have got away by sea." He stopped, and

considered for a minute. "She was seen running towards this place, half

an hour before I got here from the house," he said to Yolland. "Some

time has passed since then. Call it, altogether, an hour ago. How high

would the water be, at that time, on this side of the rocks?" He pointed

to the south side--otherwise, the side which was not filled up by the

quicksand.

"As the tide makes to-day," said the fisherman, "there wouldn't have

been water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour

since."

Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.

"How much on this side?" he asked.

"Less still," answered Yolland. "The Shivering Sand would have been just

awash, and no more."

The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have happened

on the side of the quicksand. My tongue was loosened at that. "No

accident!" I told him. "When she came to this place, she came weary of

her life, to end it here."

He started back from me. "How do you know?" he asked. The rest of them

crowded round. The Sergeant recovered himself instantly. He put them

back from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had shaken

me; he said, "Let him alone a little." Then he turned to Yolland, and

asked, "Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?"

And Yolland answered, "None. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for

ever." Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed

himself to me.