We were content. This was the loveliest thing we had found yet. Ruth recalled a phrase from the novel she had typed for Miss Gregoria Gunson. “And you will find here and there a paradise ten yards wide, a little space of warmth and colour set like a jewel in the hard iron of that coast.” Farfetched, I thought, but true enough.
It was while we were sitting there, calculating how long that bit of sun could last, that Ruth said, “We wanted a lonely place, and we’ve found it, my love. Has it struck you that we haven’t seen a human being since we got off the bus?”
It hadn’t, and it didn’t seem to me a matter of concern. I stretched my arms lazily towards the sun. “Who wants to see human beings?” I demanded. “I had enough human beings at the Magnifico to last me a very long time.”
“So long as we find some human beings to make us a bit of supper tonight . . .”
“Never fear,” I said. “We’ll do that. There! Going . . . Going . . . Gone.”
The sun went in. We packed up, climbed to the cliff top, and started off again.
At three o’clock the light began to go out of the day. This was Christmas Eve, remember. We were among the shortest days of the year. It was now that a little uneasiness began to take hold of me. Still, I noticed, we had seen no man or woman, and, though I kept a sharp lookout on the country inland, we saw no house, not a barn, not a shed.
We did not see the sun again that day, but we witnessed his dying magnificence. Huge spears of light fanned down out of the sky and struck in glittering points upon the water far off. Then the clouds turned into a crumble and smother of dusky red, as though a city were burning beyond the edge of the world, and when all this began to fade to grey ashes I knew that I was very uneasy indeed.
Ruth said: “I think we ought to leave this cliff path. We ought to strike inland and find a road – any road.”
I thought so, too, but inland now was nothing but moor. Goodness knows, I thought, where we shall land if we embark on that.
“Let us keep on,” I said, “for a little while. We may find a path branching off. Then we’ll know we’re getting somewhere.”
We walked for another mile, and then Ruth stopped. We were on the brink of another of those deep fissures, like the one we had descended for lunch. Again the path made a swift right-hand curve. I knew what Ruth was thinking before she said it. “In half an hour or so the light will be quite gone. Suppose we had come on this in the dark?”
We had not found the path we were seeking. We did not seek it any more. Abruptly, we turned right and began to walk into the moor. So long as we could see, we kept the coast behind our backs. Soon we could not see at all. The night came on, impenetrably black and there would be no moon.
It was now six o’clock. I know that because I struck a match to look at the time, and I noticed that I had only three matches left. This is stuck in my mind because I said, “We must be careful with these. If we can’t find food, we’ll find a smoke a comfort.”
“But, my love,” said Ruth, and there was now an undoubted note of alarm in her voice, “we must find food. Surely, if we just keep on we’ll see a light, or hear a voice, or come to a road—”
She stopped abruptly, seized my arm, held on to prevent my going forward. I could not see her face, but I sensed her alarm. “What is it?” I asked.
“I stepped in water.”
I knelt and tested the ground in front of me with my hands. It was a deep oozy wetness; not the clear wetness of running water. “Bog,” I said; and we knew we could go forward no longer. With cliff on the one hand and the possibility of stumbling into a morass on the other, there seemed nothing for it but to stay where we were till heaven sent us aid or the dawn came up.
I put my arm round Ruth and felt that she was trembling. I want to put this adventure down exactly as it happened. It would be nice to write that her nerves were steady as rock. Clearly they weren’t, and I was not feeling very good either. I said as gaily as I could, “This is where we sit down, smoke a cigarette, and think it out.”
We went back a little so as to be away from the bog, and then we plumped down among the heather. We put the cigarettes to our lips and I struck a match. It did not go out when I threw it to the ground. In that world of darkness the little light burning on the earth drew our eyes, and simultaneously we both stood up with an exclamation of surprised delight. The light had shown us an inscribed stone, almost buried in the heather. There were two matches left. Fortunately, we were tidy people. We had put our sandwich papers into the rucksacks. I screwed these now into little torches. Ruth lit one and held it to the stone while I knelt to read. It seemed a stone of fabulous age. The letters were mossy and at first illegible. I took out a penknife and scraped at them. “2 Miles—” we made out, but the name of this place two miles off we do not know to this day. I scraped away, but the letters were too defaced for reading, and just as the last of the little torches flared to extinction the knife slipped from my hand into the heather. There was nothing to do but leave it there.
We stood up. Two miles. But two miles to where, and two miles in what direction? Our situation seemed no happier, when suddenly I saw the stones.
I had seen stones like them on the Yorkshire moors, round about the old Bronte parsonage. But were they the same sort of stones, and did they mean the same thing? I was excited now. “Stay here,” I said to Ruth, and I stepped towards the first stone. As I had hoped, a third came into view in line with the second, and, as I advanced, a fourth in line with the third. They were the same: upright monoliths set to mark a path, whitewashed half-way up so that they would glimmer through the dark as they were doing now, tarred on their upper half to show the way when snow was on the ground. I shouted in my joy: “Come on! Supper! Fires! Comfort! Salvation!” but Ruth came gingerly. She had not forgotten the bog.
But the stones did not let us down. They led us to the village. It must have been about nine o’clock when we got there.
Half-way through that pitch-black two-mile journey we were aware that once more we were approaching the sea. From afar we could hear its uneasy murmur growing louder, and presently threaded with a heart-darkening sound: the voice of a bell-buoy tolling its insistent warning out there on the unseen water.
As the murmur of the sea and the melancholy clangour of the bell came clearer we went more warily, for we could not see more than the stone next ahead; and presently there was no stone where the next stone should be. We peered into the darkness, our hearts aching for the light which would tell us that we were again among houses and men. There was no light anywhere.
“We have one match,” I said. “Let us light a cigarette apiece and chance seeing something that will help us.”
We saw the wire hawser: no more than the veriest scrap of it, fixed by a great staple into the head of a post and slanting down into darkness. I first, Ruth behind me, we got our hands upon it, gripping for dear life, and went inching down towards the sound of water.
So we came at last to the village. Like many a Cornish village, it was built at the head of a cove. The sea was in front; there was a horse-shoe of cliffs; and snuggling at the end was a half-moon of houses behind a seawall of granite.
All this did not become clear to us at once. For the moment, we had no other thought than of thankfulness to be treading on hard cobbles that had been laid by human hands, no other desire than to bang on the first door and ask whether there was in the place an inn or someone who would give us lodging for the night.