Chapter 19: The Bull’s Horns

IT was so fatally easy.

St. Bride’s Bay lay between two very dangerous points along the coast. Its south extremity was bounded by the long jagged reef known as the Smuggler’s Reef, whilst its northern limit was formed by the jutting cliff upon which Penarvon Castle had been built, and by those two huge crescent-like projecting rocks, significantly termed the Bull’s Horns, just below the castle walls, with the treacherous silting, shifting bed of quicksand between.

For many years now in one turret of the castle there had burned from dusk till dawn a strong, steady light, warning vessels along the coast of this dangerous spot. The lantern-tower, as it was commonly called, had a separate entrance and staircase of its own, and the light was watched and tended by a disabled fisherman, who had been appointed by the late Duchess to the office when unfit for more active work. Although growing old and feeble now, he still clung to his task, and had never been found unfaithful to his post, or unable to fulfil the light duties it imposed upon him.

The light in this lantern-tower warned vessels of their exact position, and was a most valuable beacon to them; for as soon as ever they had passed it, it became necessary (if they were passing down Channel) to set the ship’s head almost due east, so as to avoid a dangerous cross current round some sunken rocks out at sea, and to keep for some short distance very near in-shore, the water being at this point very deep, and free from any rock or reef.

The plan fermenting in the darkened mind of Saul Tresithny became thus fatally easy. A small body of determined men had only to go to the lantern-tower after the household at the castle had retired to rest, overpower the old custodian, extinguish the light, and light a false beacon farther along the coast—a little to the south of the Smuggler’s Reef—and the thing was done. Any vessel beating down Channel would see the light, would clear it, and then turn sharp towards the land, and upon a dark and moonless night would strike hopelessly, and without a moment’s warning, upon those cruel Bull’s Horns, from whose deadly embrace there would be no escape. The vessel would shatter, the crew and passengers would be sucked into a living tomb. The men bent on plunder would have time to secure for themselves a certain amount of the cargo, but before morning dawned the vessel would in all probability have disappeared utterly and entirely. Saul’s act of purposeless vengeance would be accomplished, and he told himself that he should then have some peace.

Of the hapless crew—men drawn from his own class—he would not allow himself to think. They always went, more or less, with their lives in their hands, and sooner or later a large proportion met a watery death. They must take their chance. It was not with them he was concerned. What he longed to do was to strike a blow at wealth, prosperity, and rank. He was unable to take any part in the turbulent scenes enacting in the country round; but if he could lure to its fate some great vessel with its freight of passengers—one of those new vessels which worked by steam-power, that were just beginning to make headway and to appear along the coasts, to the astonishment and superstitious terror of the fishermen—if he could lure one of these vessels, which always carried wealthy passengers, who could afford to pay for the extra advantages of speed and independence of contrary wind, he felt he should be striking a blow at the hated world of wealth and opulence; and little recked he of any personal peril he might run were the thing found out.

As to his own fate, he was perfectly indifferent. A fierce despair mingled with his reckless hatred of his kind. He would willingly lay down his own life if he could by those means compass the ruin of his enemies. He would sometimes sit and ponder, with a fierce brooding envy, over the story of the death of Samson, with which Abner’s reading of the Scriptures to him in his childhood had made him familiar. If only he could achieve an act of vengeance like that! What a glorious death it would be! But there was no such way open to him of avenging his nameless wrongs against the world. He could only accomplish an isolated act of malevolent cruelty and destruction. But he brooded over that, and thought out its details, till he seemed in his feverish dreams to see the thing enacted over and over, till every detail was familiar. He used to dream that the vessel had struck, that she was going to pieces fast, that he and his comrades were out in their boats, listening to the cries and shrieks of the drowning wretches, always avoiding giving the help so agonisingly demanded, pushing savagely from the gunnel of their boat any frantic hand that might cling to it, and laughing with fiendish joy as the wretched victims sank with a gurgling cry, or were washed within the region of the treacherous quicksand.

Such dreams might well work a sort of madness in a brain inflamed with hatred, and a mind all but unhinged by illness, and perpetual revolt against the conditions of life. Saul had every detail planned by this time with almost diabolical precision. All that was wanted now was the right moment and the right vessel. He had his scouts out along the coast. He knew they would receive warning of the approach of such a vessel as would afford a rich prey for plunderers and a rich vengeance for him.

“Papa,” said Bride one morning, seeking her father with an open letter in her hand, and a soft flush upon her cheek, “I have a letter here from Eustace. He thinks of coming to the castle to tell us all about the bill, and what has been happening in London, and what is likely to happen.”

The Duke looked up with something approaching eagerness in his face. He had missed his young kinsman during these past months, and was beginning to feel it pleasant to have Eustace about the place, even though they were by no means of entire accord in their views or in their outlook on life. Although he seldom spoke on the subject, the old peer had begun to feel his hold upon life rather uncertain. He had never recovered the shock of his wife’s death, and he experienced from time to time an uneasy sensation in the region of the heart, which made him suspect that that organ was in some sort affected. His father had died suddenly of syncope at seventy years of age, and the Duke remembered hearing him describe sensations exceedingly like those from which he began at times to suffer himself.

He could not therefore but feel a wish to see something settled as to Bride’s future. She was very much alone in the world, and would be in sore need of a protector were her father taken away. He had long felt that a husband’s loving and protecting care was what she truly needed, and rather blamed himself for having kept her so entirely from meeting with men of her own age and station. But if his own heir, this young enthusiast Eustace, of whom he was really beginning to think well and to regard with affection, had really succeeded in making an impression upon the girl’s sensitive heart, nothing could be more entirely satisfactory from a worldly standpoint. No one knew better than the Duke how well fitted his daughter was to be the future Duchess of Penarvon, and how greatly she would be beloved by all, as indeed she was already. He had entertained this hope when first Eustace came amongst them, and had then allowed it to fall into abeyance, fearing how the young man’s character would turn out, and that he and Bride would never agree. But hope had revived upon the second visit, when Eustace had shown a different calibre of mind and a greater moderation and thoughtfulness. The hearts of both father and daughter had changed towards him, and again a hope had awakened within the Duke’s heart that he should still live to see his daughter the wife of the man who must succeed him at Penarvon.

Thus this announcement of Bride’s came upon him with a note of gladness, and he looked at her with unwonted animation.